


Someone Who Loves You

by Fandomme



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Absurdly long chapters, Also they all hate Kylo, Angst, Bounty Hunters, Clones, Dark Rey, Episode IX Theories, Eternal Sunshine vibes, F/M, ForceTime Chats, Gen, Grey Rey, I started writing this in 2017 and it's creeping me out how accurate it might turn out to be, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Inevitable post-TLJ fic, Inevitable post-TLJ fic about the Force bond, Jedi Mind Tricks, Long-Distance Relationship, Medical Trauma, Memento vibes, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Post-TLJ, Reylo Advent, Snoke dabbles in eugenics, The women are the most effective Knights of Ren, Unethical Use of Jedi Mind Tricks, Unethical Use of the Force, Unreliable Narrator, forcetime, long chapters, spiritual mumbo-jumbo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:47:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21653287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fandomme/pseuds/Fandomme
Summary: “I want my friends to have my body, Ben.”It flashes across his mind: the flames, the pyre. Peace and purpose. Her friends standing at her side, heads bowed. She did not call him for help. She called to say goodbye.“No,” he says, and keeps saying it, louder and louder. “No. No. NO.” He leans down to her ear. “This is not how this ends. Do you understand me? If you quit now, I will hunt down every single last one of them, and I will kill them. Personally. I’ll do it. You know I will.”“Why are you crying?” she asks.He wipes his face — his scar — with his gloved hand. “You know why.”“Say it,” she whispers. Her hand squeezes his. “Say it.”His mouth opens, and she vanishes. He’s alone, on his knees, forehead pressed into the floor. He screams and screams and screams.~~~Or, The Eternal Sunshine of the Dark Side's Bride
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 66
Kudos: 141





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the ForceTime chat opens up again, and Kylo has some explaining to do.

Rey rips her way onto a concourse level not even a week later, hair loose and knuckles scraped, a smudge of grease across her forehead. In that moment he realizes that everyone, no matter their age or gender or species, looks the same while repairing the Falcon. He also realizes — and this is by far the more disturbing realization — that he has missed her terribly.

_“Bounty hunters?”_ She’s flushed pink with rage. Or perhaps surprise. Or maybe the Falcon is just running hot. “Bounty hunters,” she repeats. “Really.”

He is about to say that it was Hux’ doing. That of course the general sent out a multi-system alert, the moment he told the other man that Snoke was her doing. That the First Order simply would not abide any other course of action. That it had taken significant effort on his part, both financial and mental, to commit the hunters to a zero-tolerance “no disintegrations” policy.

Instead, what he says is: “Would you have come, if I called?”

He means it flippantly, but there’s a flash of something that tells him her answer isn’t as simple as yes or no. Maybe she doesn’t even have an answer. Her mouth opens and closes. Her lips are chapped and her clothes are stained and she looks awful. She looks radiant. She looks frustrated with him. Which is better, perhaps, than looking afraid, or disgusted, or disappointed. She isn’t crying. That’s something.

“Well, I guess we’ll never know now, will we?” she says.

He’s in the middle of telling her that they won’t hurt her when she blinks away from him.

* * *

At first, he felt genuinely concerned that the old man might kill her.

After all, it would be in character for him. She had the power. Raw, yes. Untrained, yes. But she was all the more dangerous for it. She could hurt herself. She could hurt a lot of people.

(He sometimes imagines her hurting a lot of people. It is a pleasant thought. He imagines the subtle line between her brows emerging as the air leaves the room, as Hux falls to his knees, as the more useless on the bridge choke out their final apologies. He pictures that icy calm, like a winter wind from the place inside her he can never seem to reach, drifting over her face and spelling doom for everyone and everything in her way. He wonders how many others have witnessed that cold fury. He wonders when he will see it again.)

Eventually, Skywalker would see what he himself had seen — that power, clear and hard and sharp as desert glass. And then the old man would react as he had years ago: jealousy, paranoia, violence. The longer she spent with Skywalker, the more danger she was in. Perhaps this time, Skywalker would succeed. Perhaps this time, he would actually kill the student who so unsettled him.

“He would be doing us a favour,” he told his master.

“I don’t think you truly believe that,” Supreme Leader Snoke told him, and his image shimmered away into nothing.

He considered warning her. “Be careful with the old man,” he would say. “He’s not the hero everyone thinks he is.”

He crafted the best way to tell the story. He planned for the most shattering impact, the greatest possible damage to her illusions and Skywalker’s reputation. The man, the myth, the murderer. He would tell her the whole thing: the story of a small boy who woke up with all his brushes and paints floating around him, spilling ink everywhere, his mother livid. He would tell her about the plants that died in every apartment, the hailstorm of rocks that once pummelled the roof during a forgotten birthday party. He would tell her how his uncle the hero promised to make it better, promised to make it stop. And then, naturally, he would tell her how spectacularly the old man had failed.

But when the moment came, all he could ask was: “Did he tell you what happened?”

This was because the connection might vanish at any moment, he explained later. It was definitely not because she smelled like the rain and the sea and life itself. And it was absolutely not because she was so resolute in her wrath and disdain, so perfectly angry, so adorably innocent in her naive hatred of him, that he couldn’t for a moment imagine tainting that bright hot rage with pity. 

After all, Jakku was pitiless. He’d seen her as a child, crying alone in a howling sandstorm. He’d watched her skim her ungloved hands over a piece of shrapnel in the sand, the tears rising with the blood, the pain and surprise mingling. He’d witnessed her crawling into the bleached white bones of a great sand creature and its little ones, dead from drought, and keening into the wind.He had turned these memories over and over like long-lost artefacts. So when she stood before him later, soaking wet and bone-weary and shivering, it had no impact. None at all. He decided to feel nothing. He told himself, again and again, to feel nothing.

“I’ve never been this cold before,” she said, teeth chattering, shaking fingers trying and failing to get the flint to catch.

“I know,” he said, and she almost let herself laugh.

* * *

“We will regroup at Mustafar,” he informs the fleet. “The Imperial bases there remain intact. Returning will send a message that reverberates from the Outer Rim into the core. Skywalker is dead, and a new Supreme Leader is taking the obsidian throne.”

What he does not say is that he craves the pilgrimage his grandfather’s castle in an almost physical way. That Snoke’s obsidian ring now hangs heavily on his finger, the black crystal winking and mocking him, snagging on all his clothes and scratching him when he thrashes in the night.

Sometimes he dreams, now, of sand swallowing him whole. He dreams of thirst, and slicing open the necks of womprats and drinking their tangy, brackish blood. He dreams of odd moments, which he knows must make a chilling kind of sense to her now. Two days after seeing her, he dreams of telling someone — a man, a man with thick stubby fingers and a phlegmy laugh — to go away and not come back, and how the others at the outpost found his body a week later, his bones picked clean.

“You didn’t know,” he says aloud, upon waking. “The Force works best on the weak-minded.”

He can never be entirely sure when she’s there, and when she isn’t. What she can see and hear and feel, and what she can’t. What he is even less certain of is why he feels the need to address the issue at all. The man was a predator. She was right to get rid of him, even inadvertently. Certainly if their situations were reversed, he’d have disposed of the threat.

The bounty hunters send no word. He Forces one of the low-level staffers in Informatics to write a script that monitors all of Hux’ communications, and forwards him messages with certain keywords. He could dip into Hux’ mind, of course, or that craven thing he calls a heart. But then Hux would know, and the less Hux knows the better. It is more expedient to cultivate the illusion of perfect trust. It is a much harder illusion to maintain, now that he’s been reminded of what perfect trust feels like.

* * *

“Are you skipping meals?” he asks, the next time it happens. Why it keeps happening, he has no idea. Neither does she. Her surprise is evident.

“What? No.” But she’s pallid, sallow. Her fingers are covered in tiny plasters. Her hair is tied back but messy, wisps everywhere. And he understands with sudden and perfect clarity that she’s alone, that she’s probably stolen the Falcon, most likely with the intent of luring the bounty hunters away from the remnants of her pitiful band.

“Did you take enough rations with you?”

She flinches. “How-” Her lips clamp shut. She digs for something inside something else. It sounds like a toolbox. For all he knows, she’s marooned somewhere, adrift, her supplies dwindling. The Force is more generous with some insights than others. “I’m fine. Go away.”

“I ask because I’m hungry all the time.”

“Are you having a growth spurt?” She fixes him with a gimlet stare. Her eyes are red. They shine a little too brightly. If she cries, he’s going to break something. “Are you growing up?” she asks. “Finally?”

That night he asks for double of everything and eats until he feels sick.

* * *

Mustafar beckons red and warm. The Dark Side is strong there, and it pulls him and the others down to the blazing surface with a sure, strong grip. The bridge crew regards it and he can feel the weight of legend tugging on each of them. He can almost hear the whispers: the droids, the children, the battle, Kenobi. Darth Vader’s greatest defeat and greatest triumph, all in one place. The seat of the Dark Side, the throne of the Sith. From here he can achieve clarity. From here, he can muster his Knights and form a plan.

“You look pleased, Supreme Leader.” Hux says.

“Indeed I am,” he answers. “Have my shuttle prepared.”

The castle is not as immaculate as he might have hoped. Rebels and vandals — terrorists, he reminds himself — have blasted in the outer doors and destroyed as much as they can, over the years. There is graffiti and worse. He deploys droids to clean up the mess. Above, he hears the other shuttles beginning to land.

The inner sanctum is far less accessible and therefore more pristine. It responds to an old Imperial code, one of the few that survived from Snoke’s emergency data backup. What of Snoke’s data was lost on Supremacy remains a mystery; they have recovered only very little, and what remains is profoundly mundane. Budget reports. Generic intelligence briefings: hints of royal marriages, gossip about fallen fortunes, well-placed people whose problems made them vulnerable to blackmail. Commodity pricing trends related to ore, grain, slaves.

Nothing about any secret plans. Nothing that might provide him with a next step. Nothing of any vision. Was that the extent of Snoke’s genius, after a thousand years? Was it all just smoke and mirrors? Did he fall for a charlatan?

Vader’s old chambers draw him ever inward. It’s a whisper at first, and then a hum, and then a drone. He feels it in his teeth, in his scars. Sweat stings his eyes. His boots drag across the polished basalt. His gloves pulse with heat. By the time he reaches the innermost room he’s stripped off the cloak and cowl. Injuries aside, Vader would have needed augmentation to withstand these temperatures. A baseline humanoid body simply couldn’t take it. He understands that now. It feels like purification. When he reaches the door, when he shuts his eyes and reaches out and Forces the stone aside, he feels cleaner than he has in years.

Inside, the throne is waiting. He pushes onward along the narrow path. The Force is so strong his head bows. His heart thuds. When he falls into the seat it is strangely cold to the touch. His sweat freezes to his skin. For just a moment, he hears the high, thin sound of his grandmother’s final scream.

* * *

“Is there a problem with your coolant distribution network?”

His eyes open in the dark and she’s there, stretched out on the floor beside his new bed. The room had no bed, when they first arrived. Only a sensory deprivation chamber. His grandfather's former quarters on Mustafar are a surprisingly rich purple, the floors arranged in starbursts of massive chevron amethyst. Her fingers look deadly pale against its surface. She presses her cheek to the tile, listening with her whole body.

The chuckle is out before he can stop it. “Is there anything you won’t try to fix?”

She sits up immediately and faces away from him. Too late, he realizes he’s touched a nerve. Then again, he’s not certain he cares. Rey’s a fixer. A meddler. So convinced she knows best. Find the right tool for the job, and pry and prod and hack and bypass until she gets what she wants. As though anyone’s history could simply be…salvaged. As though anyone could be plucked up from the dead wastes and polished up all shiny and useful again. It’s arrogant and it’s dangerous and one day it’s going to kill her, if he doesn’t do the job himself.

“I can’t sleep.”

He sits up and she adjusts fractionally, her face angled away from him. She’s hiding something from him. “Turn around.”

She doesn’t move.

He lets more Force into his voice. “Rey. Turn. Around.”

She hugs her knees tighter.

“Please.”

When she turns, he has a single second between seeing the black eye and moving when he can choose to do something different. He can choose to be gentle. He can choose not to react angrily. He can choose to tell her _all is forgiven, please come back, please be safe, please, please, please._ But the moment passes and he’s out of bed, and she’s standing up, hands raised, saying it’s fine, it’s nothing, it’s over, and he’s breathing so fast he can barely talk. He actually has to pace a little circle around her before he can speak.

“Who?” he barks. “Where?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Why, was he one of yours?” he snarls. The anger is getting away from him. It spirals and reels and he finally feels like himself. He’s in her space, looming, and she stumbles back a little. If he touches her he’s going to crush her and so he absolutely must not. “Let me guess, one of your precious friends presumed that he could touch the untouchable last Jedi-”

“It was one of your bounty hunters!”

He has the oddest sensation of the floor opening beneath him. But he’s still standing right there, and so is she, staring up at him defiantly with her one good eye. If he could build a cage he would, a castle, a station, a whole planet, someplace where she would never be hurt. Which of course was exactly what he’d offered. And what she’d rejected.

“Is the hunter still alive?” he asks. (Because they won’t be. Not for long. His instructions were extremely clear. “The Jedi is mine to destroy,” he’d said. Repeatedly.)

She looks away. She looks…ashamed. He suspects that for as terrible as she looks, her opponents look far worse.

“It’s harder than you thought it would be, isn’t it?” He comes even closer. She smells like pipe smoke and cheap wine. A bar. She’d been in a bar fight. His perfect little Rey of sunshine, breaking chairs and busting heads. He’s so proud he could die. “Staying pure. Staying in the Light. It’s not so easy.”

Her one good eye turns mutinous. “If your plan is to turn me, there are better ways of going about it.”

He wishes, fervently and not for the first time, that he had anything remotely resembling a plan. But in his experience, plans are made to make the sages laugh. Chaos might be messy, but it’s honest. His hand lifts to her face and she tenses and he lets it drop. The eye has swollen shut. He lets himself see all the other wounds, the pink scar on her shoulder, the hundred tiny marks — they look like bites — on her hands. The crimson split in her lower lip.

“You should get that looked at.”

“Well, I was going to, and then…” She gestures between them. Breath sighs out of her and over his chest. Every inch of him wakes up all at once. “This is ridiculous. I haven’t had a black eye since I was twelve.”

It is as though the Maker formed her just to break him. A noise sounds in his throat and he stifles it. Her single-eyed stare softens from annoyance into curiosity. Her gaze drifts over him and he feels at once awkwardly huge and inconsequentially small. The scar prickles when her look lands on it. He steps back.

“I hate this,” he mutters.

Her mouth firms. “So end it,” she says. “Call off your dogs, Supreme Leader.”

“Come here and I will.” It’s out of his mouth before he can stop it. But the moment he says it, he likes the idea. “Give yourself up. You did it before.”

“I wasn’t giving myself up, I was-”

“Do they know you did that? Your friends? Do they know you came to me?” His head tilts. “Do they know about this? Do they know about us?”

“There is no-”

And then she’s gone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo designs a condo, has a ForceTime chat about periods, and discovers a eugenics plot.

He has budget meetings to approve the construction of another dreadnought. Its design will be more or less the same as Supremacy, with minor upgrades to shielding and weaponry, more efficient air and water recycling. A designer approaches him about his own apartments, and asks him how much space he might require.

“My tastes are simple,” is all he can think to say.

“And it does you credit, Supreme Leader,” the designer says. Belatedly, he notices that she has retailored her uniform in a visually pleasing and regulation-flaunting way. He should disapprove, but doesn’t. “When it is time, one of my team will share swatches and samples with you. For now I am speaking purely of the floor-plan. There is some flexibility in that area.”

“Obviously I wish it to be secure.”

The designer politely restrains a laugh. Instead she merely smiles, and pinches something open on her datapad. She hands it to him. “I apologize for being unnecessarily delicate, Supreme Leader. I merely wish to ascertain how many people you would like your apartments to sustain.”

Out of reflex, his mental walls go up instantly. Perhaps for this exact reason, he catches Rey reflected in the surface of the datapad, as though she’s standing just over his shoulder. He watches Rey frowning, listening. Can she see the layout? Most likely not. But it’s impossible to be sure. The rules governing their interaction seem fuzzy at best.

“I do not mean to be forward, Supreme Leader,” the designer is saying. “I only wish for your comfort. If we build the right space for you ahead of time, you-”

“Two,” he says, staring hard at Rey’s reflection on the pad’s blinking surface. He pitches his voice ever so slightly louder, so Rey will have no trouble hearing. “I would like apartments with room enough for two. With a soaking bath. And greenery.”

If the designer is at all scandalized by his choices, she does not betray it. She merely nods, make note of it, and shows him a layout that would be appropriate. He pays only the thinnest attention. His eyes are on the reflection in the datapad.

Rey is right. There are other ways of turning her.

* * *

Going over Phasma’s logs indicate that FN-2187’s problem is not a one-off. To her credit, she chased down this one example of lassitude in her own ranks and did the investigation necessary to root out the rot. What remains of Snoke’s records confirm her suspicions: other captains may have buried the truth under bar charts and glimmering graphics, but it’s there. They have a disloyalty issue. They need to either screen more effectively at the start, train more brutally throughout, or change practises.

One of Snoke’s marginal comments sticks out: “Cross-ref EC MC tests?”

And yet searching the term “EC MC test” yields no results.

He summons the pre-adult programme director via holo. She is a short, hard woman with flint eyes and a thin line for a mouth. Her posture makes him sit up straighter.

“I am intrigued by a notation in my predecessor’s data banks, regarding the pre-adult screening process.”

The programme director nods. “The late Supreme Leader was very concerned with that phase of intake. He personally oversaw many aspects of it, before rising to the position you yourself now hold.”

“And would you have access to his records?”

“Yes, Supreme Leader. I can forward them, if you would like.”

He nods. “While I have you here, I want to know your perspective on the issue of disloyalty.”

Alarm ripples through her. He feels it and turns it back. “Supreme Leader, are you asking about disloyalty in general, or among certain of the ranks?”

“You know what I’m asking about. It’s in every report.”

She collects herself. Her shoulders square up and she meets his eyes. “With respect, Supreme Leader, I believe that the First Order’s decision to rely on compulsory labour has a direct relationship to the quality of our forces.”

This is her extremely delicate way of saying that conscripting children to fight a war is probably an inefficient way of winning.

“Thank you for your candor,” he hears himself say. She smiles, and he Forces, carefully: “One more thing. The former Supreme Leader left a personal message for me regarding the EC MC tests?”

Her smile brightens. “Of course, the midichlorian panels. I’ll forward you the records.”

Midichlorians. Of course. How predictable. His former master was loyal only to his obsessions.

“Would you like the test results from Starkiller as well?”

His heart stops. A sick feeling washes over him. Without even opening the document, he knows what it will contain. Whose blood was tested. “Yes. I would.”

* * *

“Did you hurt yourself?”

She’s curled under a blanket. He feels like he’s been kicked. She’s slurping from a pouch of something that smells too sweet and he has an intense craving for wine. He had rolled over and there she was on the other end of the bed, eyes wide, bruise faded to a mild yellow. The surprise of her presence hit him just enough to dull the pain at first, but the surprise has dissipated and the pain is not receding.

“Did someone hurt you?” he asks. “Did you-”

“No. It’s nothing.”

He props himself on an elbow. “It’s not nothing. Stop saying that. It’s not _nothing_.”

“Oh right, that’s me. _I’m_ the nothing.”

He flops on his back. He knows the tone of this argument. He has heard it play out again and again. It is almost comfortingly familiar. “I’m not doing this.”

“Well, we don’t have much choice. We’re still bonded together, and apparently that means meeting occasionally to argue.”

“That’s not the Force, that’s just marriage,” he quips, and the pain in his abdomen worsens as she laughs. It’s a delightful sound, and he can’t keep the smile off his face, even as the pain inside him — inside them both — scrabbles and scratches like a living thing.

He turns his head, but only his head. “It feels like a fathier kicked you.”

In the dimness he can’t be sure, but it looks a lot like she’s blushing. “It’s nothing; I told you.”

He rolls over. “Was it a bounty hunter?” He’s seen nothing in Hux’ messages or his own communications about a successful attack. But his monitoring could be failing. And if it is, he needs to know. He needs to know who to hurt.

“There was no bounty hunter. Honestly. You don’t know much, do you, Supreme Leader Ren?”

“So tell me what I don’t know.”

She sighs. Her eyes squeeze shut. She’s blushing so hard he can feel it in his own face. Or maybe that’s just him, being here with her. It’s certainly possible. He makes a show of listening hard and uses it to edge closer. Just an inch or two, but enough to feel her warmth through the linens.

“How long has it been?” she asks, finally.

“Eighteen days.”

A tiny smile unfurls across her lips. The split is mostly gone. Thank goodness. “I mean, since Jakku.”

He counts. “A little longer than two standard months.”

Her eyes snap open. “Yes. But we have long lunar months, on Jakku.”

“What does it matter how long the-” His mouth falls open. Her eyes widen. They each look away from each other in unison. “Well, then.” 

“Yes.”

Her feelings always come through so clearly. She’s terrible at hiding them, even at the best of times. But now she’s wide open for him: the dull physical pain, the embarrassment, a very specific craving for a fried insect dish he doesn’t know the name of, but can almost taste. But above all, exhaustion. She’s spent. The constant running has worn her down. And now this. Now him.

Part of her is glad to see him. Part of her is mortified. The indignity of it. That he should see her like this, bleeding. That he always somehow sees her when she’s weak: asleep in his arms on Takodana, shaking and almost crying in her restraints, shivering and cold on the island, screaming for Snoke. It’s infuriating. It’s terrifying.

Somehow, she’s forgotten all the other moments. The ones when he holds a saber inches from her face and her composure remains intact, when she glides over his fears like wind shaping dunes, when he has her pinned and she fights back twice as hard and it takes the destruction of a planet to thwart her destruction of him. His favourite moments.

But he doesn’t mention any of those moments. What he asks is: “You’re out of painkillers?”

“I took them. But I think hyperspace makes it worse.” She hugs her knees. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would hurt you, too. I should have gotten the implant.”

This is too much. They cannot be having this conversation. Neither of them are ready for it. He launches out of bed in the direction of the liquor cabinet. He wonders, idly, if he even has enough there to ease their pain and embarrassment. “Pick your poison.”

When she says nothing, he grabs at random and starts pouring. The first glass is down his gullet when he says: “You need the implant. You need to be…healthy.” What he wants to say is that they cannot do this every cycle, that if if they do this every cycle he will find her and lock her up and ply her with wine and baths and anything she demands if it means the pain will stop. He pours another glass and gets to work. “There’s cash…” He tries to remember. “There should be Republic credits in the storage unit in the starboard bulkhead. Look for an old box of flares. It has a false bottom. If it’s still there.”

He keeps drinking until they both fade away.

* * *

After reading the analysis of most EC MC tests, in broad strokes, he thinks he’s ready to tackle Rey’s report. But when the report does arrive, the file format is a presentation, not a document. It opens in his chambers and there is Snoke, big as life. The first words out of his wizened mouth are “Congratulations, my young apprentice.”

He blinks.

“If you are receiving this message, Kylo Ren, it is because I am dead. That is the only way you could possibly obtain access to this report. I debated sharing it with you, but since it concerns your possible future, I feel that you must know.”

He folds his arms.

“As you may have gathered, while you were speaking to me on Starkiller Base about the scavenger girl, one of my droids was taking a sample of her blood. We have sequenced her code, and I think that it may interest you to learn what we found.”

The image splits in two, and hanging in the air are two different profiles. One of them bears his name. His old name. The age on it suggests that the relevant sample was taken when he was an infant.

“Yes, that is your profile,” Snoke says. “And yes, I employed some very resourceful people at the location where your mother delivered you. They were all too happy to help me confirm my suspicions about your spectacular potential.”

The other profile swarms the display. “This is the scavenger girl, Rey. Nothing special, not much to look at, in terms of lineage. Nothing so illustrious as yourself. But my, my, look at these midichlorians!”

Her blood is teeming with it. It feels like staring into a nebula.

“There is an environmental hypothesis for midichlorian expression, of course. It was much discounted in the old days, in favour of the hereditary model. But this sample made me reconsider. Perhaps living in hardship, under such harsh conditions on Jakku, caused an innate potential in the girl to express itself.”

“She has a name,” he whispers. It feels good to talk back to him. Finally.

“Whatever the cause, we must investigate this further. And so I have linked you through the Force. A Jedi would tell you that we are all connected, of course, and from that point of view I simply turned up the fidelity, as it were.” Snoke leers. “But I have always enjoyed putting talented people together. And I daresay, with your respective abilities, your natural compatibility, it might just…stick.”

“You’re sick,” he tells the holo. “You were always sick. I see that, now.”

“If we’d had more time on Starkiller — if you had proven more useful in locating that map — I would have harvested more than just a blood sample. The girl herself may be drawn to the light, but her progeny, well…” Snoke makes an elaborate shrug and he feels his stomach flip over. “You may wish to pursue that avenue, yourself, Kylo Ren. Buried in this file are the last known locations of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s remaining clone tanks.”

It feels as though Snoke is staring right into him. “You could have her for your very own. Clone her. Mould her as you see fit. Or,” and Snoke sits back, and his ring, the very same ring on his own finger now, winks at the camera, “or use the tanks for your own descendants. Blend your two talents. Hybridize your abilities. You could have the most powerful children in the galaxy. Rule the stars with your sons and daughters. Create a legacy that lasts for a thousand years. You don’t need her for that, you know. All you need is her…material. You might-”

He cuts off the file. Extracts the crystal from the display. Holds it in his hand. It burns. He pockets it. He leaves his chambers and leaves the castle and he stands on a gantry overlooking the lava refinery. It would be so easy. So simple. He could just…drop the crystal. Lose the information. Lose the plan. His fist rises and and he reaches back to hurl the awful thing over the side and watch it crackle and burn.

Rey materializes beside him. Tears roll down her face. Before she can speak he feels it: a sudden emptiness. It’s like the tide rolling out before a big storm, exposing the craggy, wriggling bottom of the ocean floor. It was there, ebbing and flowing but always steady, predictable. Deep. Powerful. And now it is gone. Silent. Forever.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. From far away, he hears a lieutenant’s boots clanging on the gangplank, calling his name. He knows the news before he hears the words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> REVIEWS ARE AN EFFECTIVE TREATMENT FOR SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo hosts a dinner party.

How much happier would his parents have been with a different child? Would Solo have resented his wife’s power and position slightly less? Would Organa have finally felt comfortable seeing herself as a mother? She had known so little of mothers, herself. Would their thoughts — their most awful thoughts, their least charitable thoughts — have been quieter, at least? He rather doubted that either of them ever truly wanted a family in the first place. For Organa it would have been a royal obligation, if that. Having a child certainly wasn’t part of the plan for Solo.

As a boy, he wished and hoped for a secret sibling he might one day discover, like Luke discovered Leia. Han Solo got around — everyone knew that. At least, Calrissian said so, once, during a very late night after too much brandy. Solo was asleep in his chair. It wasn’t much of a stretch, Calrissian whispered, to imagine that there might be a brother or sister out there, somewhere. And then the Wookiee put a paw on his shoulder and he coughed and poured himself a big glass of water. But the thought took hold of his younger self, and he held tight to it. Was there another, somewhere, waiting? A brother might be nice, but he wasn’t picky. A sister wouldn’t be so bad, if she were a princess. All he wanted, after all, was…someone else.

Years later, when he met Rey, he wondered. The events as they unfolded were almost painful in their perfection. The droid, the ship, the girl, the man. It was as though the Force had returned the Falcon from the ashbin of history after all that time to smuggle him something that was actually worth stealing. This spinebarrel of a girl, all covered in spikes and venom, who made the Force purr and growl in equal measure.

He might be happier if she were his own flesh and blood. It would make some things easier. And it would make others much, much more difficult.

All of them — himself, Solo, Organa, Skywalker, not to mention the people of the Hosnian system and the villagers of Tuanul, some of Skywalker’s lesser students, countless others — would have been better off if Leia had simply not borne him. Why she decided to go through with it all those years ago is beyond him. And now he will never have the chance to ask.

“I can’t see it,” he says to Rey. “I can feel the heat, but…” He shakes his head.

Rey says nothing. She appears to be listening to someone else. She’s weeping openly, tears shining on her face, and she’s wearing something uncharacteristically lovely and fine — something his mother would doubtless have approved of.

Casually, she shifts weight so she’s standing nearer. Without looking at him, she lets her left hand drift closer to his right. The back of her hand touches the back of his, and their fingers tentatively entwine. The contact wrenches him close to her, and for a moment he can see it: the flames, the streak of X-wings across the sky, a girl in braids singing a song. He is surrounded by the Resistance, and he is also surrounded by the pits of Mustafar, and when he sees a soft blue glow at the edge of the fire’s light, he thinks they are both of them surrounded by ghosts.

* * *

His Knights arrive soon after. They arrive singly but in a retinue, a sudden dark constellation of stealth craft. Hux grudgingly organizes a formal military reception for their welcome. The boots are shined, the armor polished, hair slicked. It looks like power. It feels like history.

All five arrive hooded and masked. All five kneel before him in a line, sabers proffered in their open palms. He counts to ten silently before saying the words. They’ve been away from him for too long; it has taken them an insulting amount of time to arrive. Now is his turn to make them wait.

“Brothers and sisters, you are welcome to Mustafar,” he says, finally. As one they arise.

At Hux’ insistence, there is a formal dinner. This is an obvious ploy to see the Knights un-masked, but Hux describes it as a matter of greasing the wheels of diplomacy. If he’s to make the Knights a part of his senior staff, Hux claims, then the others in the leadership had better get to know them sooner rather than later. The Hux family didn’t rise to their position by neglecting matters of protocol, he reminds the Supreme Leader.

Graciously, the Supreme Leader doesn’t ask if patricide is a matter of protocol. After all, he’s in no position to judge.

While his own apprenticeship was proceeding, his brothers and sisters also followed Snoke’s orders: Patrice was deployed to the Core, Iko to the Inner Rim, Bry to the Mid Rim, Mai to the Outer Rim, and Tanas to the Unknown Regions. Their task was to foment instability within the Republic by sowing discord, so that when the First Order eventually took power, the other systems would be easier to take down. Snoke viewed this task from an extraordinarily broad lens: almost any project could be approved, if it furthered that one goal.

This was why Mai created a gang war between the Hutt families, the Black Sun, and the Pyke Syndicate that left heads on spears in major towns. It was why Bry developed a custom fungus that killed the hardwoods of Naboo and Kashyyk and changed the tariffs on infrastructure imports. It was why Iko introduced a highly addictive club drug and then released the recipe so everyone could make it. It was why Patrice had killed her husband the Senatorial Court justice.

“And how are the children?” he asks.

“Very well, thank you,” Patrice says. “The image of their father.”

As one, the table smirks.

“Sensitive?” Tanas asks.

Patrice considers. “Possibly,” she says. “But it remains to be seen. I held contact with all three of them, when they were inside me. But it has faded over time. I expect to see an awakening in Abi, first. Girls mature so much faster, after all.”

Across from him, Hux is barely holding back his mingled curiosity and disgust. “You…” His mouth hangs open. He really does look just like a fish, sometimes. Or perhaps some translucent amphibious species. Some gawping, bottom-feeding thing. “You spoke with your children while they-”

“Yes,” Patrice cuts him off. “All women who are strong with the Force can do so.” She sips wine and asks airily: “Have you considered children, Kylo?”

The question catches him so off-guard he actually says: “What?” and the others laugh. Hux looks delighted at the sudden reversal.

“Don’t look so surprised! You have a legacy to ensure.”

“I don’t have the best luck with families,” he says.

“You don’t need to have a family to have a child,” Patrice says.

It occurs to him that Snoke may have shared the location of the clone tanks with the others; it would be unlike him to leave such a powerful tool un-leveraged. Perhaps this is the opening for him to discuss it. Perhaps this is why Patrice has even brought up the issue; she wants to know what he knows. Or maybe she’s testing his faithfulness to Snoke’s ideas.

“Indeed,” Tanas says. “The children I’ve found thus far are usually isolated from theirs, as we were.”

And this was Tanas’ mission in the Unknown Regions. Of them all, he was the most sensitive to the Force. He could pluck feelings from the air; what made him seem like a good tactician was really just a profound understanding of how the beings surrounding him felt, what they wanted, what they feared. When Snoke found him, he barely spoke. He saw no value in verbal communication. Naturally, Snoke deployed him to find new Force-sensitives at the edge of known space.

“How many have you found?” Iko asks.

“Twelve,” Tanas says. “Something changed, after Starkiller. I can feel more.”

“And how many have you retrieved?” Mai asks.

“Only the eldest two,” Tanas says. “But I maintain regular contact with all of them. I need not have them with me, to influence them. When the new temple is finished on Korriban, I’ll bring the rest to me and begin formal training.”

“And you’re certain that your two won’t run off?”

Tanas snorts. “My boys? They’re in love,” he says. “They’re playing house on Rakata Prime, as we speak. They’ll never-” He freezes. Soft silence descends. “What is that?” Tanas asks in a flat voice.

Rey stands across the room from him at the foot of the table, not far from Hux. She’s still in formal garb. Still meeting Organa’s old friends. At any other time, he might consider telling her to wear that shade of green more often. But what he tells her with his face, with his whole being, with everything he can send over their connection, is to please leave.

“What is what?” Hux asks, looking around. “I don’t hear anything.”

“We’re not alone,” Mai says. “There is another presence here.”

Across the room, Rey goes pale.

“Another presence,” Hux drawls. His voice drips sarcasm. And he has never been more grateful for Hux’ aristocratic brand of atheism, his stubborn refusal — so like Han Solo’s — to accept the Force as anything other than a cheap magic trick. “In this room? With us? Right now?”

“It’s Mustafar,” he says carefully. “There are ghosts everywhere.”

“That thing is very much alive,” Tanas says. He’s staring right at her. “And it is very strong.”

<<Can he see me?>> The question rings out in his mind. Ordinarily, he would be delighted at this new development. If he can hear her, she can hear him. In another scenario, he would enjoy testing the limits of that discovery. 

He takes a sip of water and tries to focus. <<I don’t know. I don’t think so. But you need to leave.>>

<<I can’t control this!>>

<<Try.>>

“What is that intoxicating fragrance?” Patrice asks. “Isn’t that a moongazer lily?”

“They only grow on Naboo,” Iko says.

“Oh, no,” Rey whispers, and he watches the whole table, except for Hux, prick up their ears.

<<Leave. Get in your ship and go. Right now.>>

“It must be my grandmother,” he says, a little too loudly. As one, his Knights turn to him. Away from Rey. Thank the Maker.

“Your grandmother?” Hux drains his wine. He gestures with his empty glass. A droid hovers nearby and tries in vain to get a lock on the cup's position so it can pour more. “Your dead grandmother is visiting us. Right now. For dinner.”

“She was the queen of Naboo, once upon a time,” he says, because there is never a bad time to remind Hux of his own lineage. “And Vader’s memory of her is very strong, in this place. I felt it, the moment I first entered his chambers.” He raises a glass to Patrice. “Perhaps family is on my mind, after all.”

Tanas is still staring at him when Rey vanishes.

He spends a long night wondering if Snoke told his Knights about the bond. And if his Knights and Hux’ bounty hunters are working in concert. And what he will need to do if they are. He likes Rey’s odds in most any fight, but his Knights don’t fight fair. They will tear her apart. And if they learn the truth, that will be the end of him.

* * *

She appears behind him in his mirror the next morning, while he’s shaving. He nicks himself and they both wince. There’s barely any embarrassment at the towel around him; just a mutual flood of relief that the other one is even present.

“Do they know?” she asks.

He folds the razor carefully onto itself. Sets it on the sink. “They suspect.” His eyes flick over the shape of her. It’s obvious she’s had no rest, either. “You saw their faces. Can you remember them?”

She nods.

“If you see them again, tell them you’re my informant.”

The furrow appears between her brows. “Would that really work?”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

Behind him, she steps closer. “End this,” she says. “End the search. Stop trying to kill my friends. Stop putting us on opposite sides.”

“My offer stands. Come to Mustafar, give yourself up, and all of this can be over.”

“All of it?” she asks, and steps even closer. So earnest. So single-minded. So pure. She really does smell like moongazer lilies. Some of the blossoms are still in her hair. His hands twitch at his sides. “You’d stop hunting the Resistance?”

“Yes,” he whispers. Because of course. He’d call the whole thing off tomorrow. Announce a new direction. New priorities. New ideas. If she would only give him the strength to do it. Because he cannot do it alone.

“What about the war?” she asks.

He swallows. She leans in. He feels her hands rest on either side of the sink, a finger-width away from his own. Her voice is low and tight like she’s trying to rein in something — hope, rage, sorrow, perhaps all three. He can’t see her — she’s hidden behind the breadth of his body, inside his shadow — but her heat radiates across his back and prickles his scars. When she speaks her breath is on his skin and he knows if he turns around, now, everything will be different. Forever.

“What about the weapons? And kidnapping children? Turning them into Stormtroopers? Will you put a stop to all that, too?” She’s trembling. Her voice, her body, everything. “How much am I worth, to you? How many lives can I buy with my own?”

He says nothing. There is no answer. No answer he can give that will satisfy both of them. She steps away, outside his shadow, looking everywhere but at him. “I thought so,” she says. The heel of her hand rises to wipe at the corner of her eye and before it can do so, she’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A somewhat shorter chapter this time! It just felt like a more natural stopping point. Also I was happy to finally get to the Knights of Ren. What did you think?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo has the best meeting of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: I take some liberties with Sith lore, here. If you're a stickler for the lore, you might be annoyed. 
> 
> And thank you to everyone who has been commenting and kudos-ing! It really livens up the drab winter days.

He commissions a feasibility study on alternative personnel solutions. This is bureaucratic language for figuring out how to avoid the issues that Captain Phasma noticed among the Stormtroopers. Namely, the disloyalty. He has the numbers. He has the metrics. Phasma was thorough in her reports. That makes it an easy investigation to justify.

It’s also a way to avoid, as the First Order’s critics might put it, “kidnapping children and turning them into Stormtroopers.” He doesn’t mention that part. He does mention something about needing to explore public-facing personnel solutions that scale, as the First Order expands ever deeper into the Core.

“No one wants a return to the Clone Wars, Supreme Leader,” Hux informs him. He’s reviewing the final language on the study before sending it to Research & Development. It’s one of the things he’s truly good at. “Droids and tanks are archaic, unreliable technologies. The First Order runs on human power.”

“The First Order runs on loyalty, General,” he counters. “And loyalty will be harder to come by, the closer we get to the Core. We’re not dealing with filthy villages on nowhere planets like Jakku, anymore. These are established systems.”

“Shame you didn’t eliminate Niima Outpost, when you scorched that other filthy village on Jakku,” Hux muses. “Then that girl wouldn’t be such a problem, now. Did you see that report on the old clone facility? There’s a rumour that’s her doing, too. You won’t have much luck resurrecting that particular tradition, if that’s your solution to the staffing issue.”

He frowns. Old clone facility? Is he referring to the same tanks that Snoke told him about? It’s probably best to change the subject. He’s behind on his reports. He’s a fast reader, but Snoke had never really prepared him for the sheer volume of material he’d be consuming as Supreme Leader.

“Is that your way of telling me you wish Snoke were still alive?” he asks.

Hux smirks. “Let's not borrow trouble, Ren.”

Trouble doesn’t begin to describe it. Trouble is a bad motivator on a droid. Trouble is a faulty compressor that needs a bypass. Trouble is a drunk diplomat. Snoke was random torture, and constant surveillance, and the curiously addictive mix of intermittent praise and punishment.

He could try explaining that to Armitage — maybe that could be the trust between them, their mutual hatred of the old thing. But doing so would involve explaining years of Sith lore to Hux, and that’s a non-starter. Moreover, it would mean talking about everything else. His mother. His father. His uncle. And Rey.

* * *

It’s in the hour before his alarm sounds, when his eyes inevitably open too early, that she next appears. She sits facing him at the foot of his bed, uncannily upright, probably propped up in her own little berth somewhere. Their feet almost touch.

“Did you know,” she says, not even looking up from whatever is in her lap, “that the start of the schism between Jedi and Sith was because of a single word?”

“The original ideograph for the Force,” he says, sitting up. This is an old story. In truth, it’s probably apocryphal — a simple piece of lore to explain something a lot more complex. But he still knows it by heart. “The Sith believed that the closest translation to the ideograph in the sacred texts was the common word for _power_. The Jedi believed it was _love_.”

Now she looks up. She wears the same expression she did in the turbolift. Before Snoke. Before everything. He decides this must be how she looks whenever she’s fixing something. Earnest. Hopeful. Resolute.

“But it’s more than that,” she says, “they also disagreed on the definition of love itself. That was the real source of the argument — whether love could be the word for the Force, if love was not the thing they thought it was.”

“The Jedi believed that love for all beings was the highest form of love,” he says, tonelessly, because now he’s just repeating rote lessons. “That’s why they avoided long-term relationships. But the Sith believed that real love only existed in tight relationships. It’s why the Sith moved in pairs. A long time ago, the teacher-student relationship was very different.”

She blinks and looks a little mortified. This is obviously very new information. “Was that why Luke didn’t want to teach me?”

“He didn’t want to teach you because he was a coward, Rey.” When her mouth opens to protest he says, loudly, “He was afraid of you, and afraid of your power, and you know it.”

Her gaze drops back down to her lap. “He said he was scared of me.”

“Of course he was scared of you. You’re scary.” Her mouth falls open and she looks ready to throw something. “It wasn’t an insult,” he adds.

She pinks up and it’s the most delightful thing, really, how she has no idea what to do with a compliment. Embarrassment radiates off her; he barely needs the bond to perceive it. Then abruptly it ceases and she’s scowling. “Wait. Did Snoke, with you, did he-”

“No.” He cuts her off before her flush reddens into anger. “He had other ways of controlling me. Thinking he controlled me.”

She sighs. “Oh. Well. Good.” She resumes paying attention to her book. He thinks it’s a book, anyway. He hears the scratch of pages against each other. There is a question perched on the edge of her tongue. He can almost hear it, before she says it. “And when you offered to teach me?”

Excitement spikes in him and he lets her feel it. Their hearts skip the same beat. She’s right on the edge there with him. It’s the most direct acknowledgement she’s ever granted this thing between them. He’s not entirely sure what to do with it. It’s easier to be on the offensive, to be the one doing the chasing. He can’t imagine her chasing him. He can’t imagine running away.

“I would have taught you anything you wanted to know,” he says, willing his voice not to crack, and willing her to hear all the meanings he intends. “And I still would.”

“If I join you.”

He nods. “It’s your choice. It always has been.”

She adjusts a little, trying to be prim and proper, trying to find a loophole. “And if your bounty hunters catch me first?”

“They’re Hux’ bounty hunters. I didn’t ask for them. And if they catch you, the First Order will try to execute you for killing Snoke, and-” He has to swallow hard, because his throat is actually closing. “And I don’t know if I could stop it.”

She finally looks up from her book and her eyes are wet. Damn it. “Because you choosing me would be so awful,” she says. “You couldn’t possibly imagine coming along with some _nobody_ from _nowhere_ -”

“Don’t even start,” he says. “It’s not about that, and you know it. We’d be hunted to the edge of known space.”

“And that’s the real problem, isn’t it? _Prince_ Ben Solo, _Supreme_ Leader of the First Order, the boy who had _everything_ , can’t imagine a life on the run, so I have to-”

“You _chose_ that life when you _left_ me!”

“You’d miss, what, your all-black everything and your giant bed and your, your…” She wipes her eyes. Her voice is thick. “I can’t even see it. You know? I can’t even see what’s around you that’s so special, that’s so much more special than…”

And she has him, there. There is nothing more special than this. The Force works in mysterious ways, and none are more mysterious than this conduit, this one terrible vulnerability in his shielding that only she has access to. And he recalls now that when he had first learned the story — the one about the Sith and the Jedi schism over the translation of a single word — he had asked Luke which the right answer was. Was the Force power? Or was it love?

As usual, Luke had answered a question with a question. “Isn’t love the greatest power?”

He is about to tell her this, but when he opens his mouth she says simply, “Please don’t,” and lies down. She faces away from him at the foot of his bed. His alarm sounds and he shuts it off and doesn’t move, just keeps staring at that how tightly she’s folded herself. The question is still rolling around his skull when she fades away.

* * *

Tanas sends him a subspace communication warning him that his children are disappearing. Not his two on Rakata Prime, no, but the others, scattered throughout the Unknown Regions, the ones he’s been keeping tabs on.

“It’s like they went to sleep and didn’t wake up,” he says. “They’re alive. I can feel it. But they’re somewhere else, somewhere I can’t reach them. Not one of them has even called for help.”

He can mask his suspicions with displeasure, but only just. Of course it’s Rey’s doing. It must be. Though how she got the idea to start looking for Force-sensitive children, he hasn’t the first clue. He makes his expression more formidable. “I told you to move forward as soon as possible, but you chose to delay. This is the consequence.”

“Those children were spread over many systems; I had no idea the witch would find them so easily.”

“Assuming it was her. Do you have proof of that? More importantly, did you teach them to shield themselves, Tanas?”

For just the briefest second, Tanas is irate at being second-guessed. But it passes, and he collects himself and says: “No, I did not. Doing so might have encouraged them to cut off their connection to me.”

Occasionally, in his very worst moments, he wonders if Rey saw into Snoke while he prodded her mind. She had a knack for it, after all. Maybe she saw things. Maybe she learned things. Maybe she watched his whole history with Snoke spooling out in front of her, as she screamed and screamed. But what is more likely is that Tanas’ students were all blazing brightly in the Force, and she found them, because scouring a wasteland for beautiful and dangerous things is what she does. 

“How many?”

“Seven.”

He should punish Tanas. It’s their way. And disciplining the Knights is now fully his responsibility and no one else’s. If he doesn’t hurt Tanas, he will lose Tanas’ respect and ultimately, Tanas will turn on him. That is their code. It’s simple and brutal and easy to adhere to. That, Snoke had often said, was why the Sith succeeded. Theirs was the path of least resistance. Blood for blood. Pain for pain.

“I’m sorry,” he hears himself say.

“What?” Tanas asks, and then corrects himself. “I’m grateful, Kylo, but I do not need your condolences. I take full responsibility.”

“I know you miss them. I feel it.” And he does. It’s obvious. Snoke would not have deployed Tanas on such a mission if he wasn’t, on some level, able to connect to the children. He found the children and cultivated them and they were stolen from him. Tanas is hurt.

Tanas is hurt, which means Rey is in terrible danger.

“Will you hunt her down?”

“And join your bounty hunters?” Tanas’ scorn is clear. “No. By your leave, I will wait. One of the children will reach out to me. And when they do, I will find their location. And I will be ready.”

“Wise,” he says, and he does everything he can to avoid thinking of that particular match-up, Rey and Tanas and the children in between. He imagines an empty red room. He imagines an island. Craggy and lonely and wreathed in mist, alone on a cold, dark sea-

“But if you order it, Kylo, I will find her.”

His stomach turns. He swallows. “Will you, now?”

“I could hunt her through the Force. Track her that way, the same way I found the children. If she was strong enough to kill Snoke, she must burn very brightly indeed.”

“You have no idea,” he whispers.

“So, if you ask it of me, I will find her. And I will deliver her to you.”

Tanas must know how this tempts him. It must be coming off him in waves. This is why he made the suggestion. He may not understand the particulars, but he can feel the hunger. They are brothers, after all. They have known each other since before they knew themselves. If he asks, Tanas will find her and bring her to him. And then he will watch Tanas kill her. But he will have seen her one last time, with his own eyes.

“No.” It’s painful to say it. His body doesn’t want him to. His throat closes and his eyes burn just saying the one single word. “Patrice is right,” he adds, because Patrice is always right, “we must think of our legacy. Gather the rest of the children to you before they can be found. Then move from Rakata Prime and go straight to Korriban. The Jedi will be weak there.”

“As you wish,” Tanas says, and switches off.

* * *

Days later he rolls over in bed and there she is, her back to him, and finally he just says it: “Come here.”

“I can’t come to Mustafar. I have my own things to do. Important things. You wouldn’t understand.” She sounds like she’s been rehearsing her answer. Because of course she has been. How else would she justify, as she said it, kidnapping children?

It’s evidence of his exhaustion that he doesn’t even rise to the bait of her hypocrisy. He just says, “No. Come… _here_.”

She rolls over and there are the imprints of sheets on her cheek and it’s so intimate, so domestic and normal and real, he actually has to swallow a sigh. Between them, he’s the only one who knows what a marriage actually looks like. He watches her gaze flick over him, making tactical decisions about clothes and position and all of it.“What happens if I do?”

“Nothing you don’t want.”

She inspects the space between them, brow furrowed, chewing her lip, her whole body stiff and hesitant. Instantly he’s his father: “No. You’re right. Bad idea.”

He rolls away from her. He fixes his gaze on the opposite wall. She’s still there, warm and breathing and an arm’s length away, just like always. Did his father have nights like this? He must have. He remembers slammed doors and gently prodding the old smuggler awake on a series of sofas in a series of increasingly ornate diplomatic apartments. Once, he had asked his mother why his father simply didn’t have his own room. It was one of the few times he could recall her having nothing to say.

“I don’t know…” Rey says. “I don’t know how to…”

“Well, I said you needed a teacher,” he rasps, and the cruelty feels good. It feels absurdly good, shoving her inexperience in her face.

She flops over, and wriggles away from him. “This is a lot easier when you’re asleep, you know.”

It takes him a moment to add up her words.

“What?” He flips over and reaches for her, but there’s nothing but a hint of warmth in the sheets, and, as he discovers in the morning, a few strands of hair. It’s going lighter at the ends. She’s been in the sun. She’s been between the stars. She’s on the adventure of a lifetime, and he’s requisitioning feasibility studies. Reading reports. Attending budget meetings.

Without him, she’s the freest she’s ever been. And without her, he’s…a bureaucrat.

* * *

“He’s lying to you,” Rey says.

She’s in a good mood, which means he’s about to have a bad day. Normally when she’s this pleased, it’s because a base is about to blow up, or because one of his frigates has gone missing, or because a critical supply line has been interrupted. She’s sitting on the conference table at his elbow, swinging her legs off the edge, flight suit half-zipped and all around her. She gestures with a spoon.

“The insulation in that line of capacitors was always garbage,” she says. “It was garbage thirty years ago, and it’s garbage now. I tried to salvage it off the _Ravager_ and it crumbled in my hands.”

They are in the middle of a design meeting. Or rather, he is in the middle of a design meeting. Rey is wherever she is, feet bare and swinging dangerously close to his arm. The designers and project managers cannot see her, and she cannot see them, but apparently her hearing has sharpened with practise.

“And have we used this variety of capacitor before?” he asks.

“We have, Supreme Leader. More accurately, the Empire used it in super star destroyers. It is an older design, but a stable one. And the factories stand ready to produce it, without retrofitting. A different design would take more time and money.”

He moves his head just a fraction, careful not to look Rey directly in the eye. She shrugs, scrapes the edge of her bowl, and says: “You get what you pay for, Supreme Leader.”

The mask does wonders for hiding his smile. It also has the rather delightful effect of making her more brash. It takes them back to the beginning, when he’s the creature in a mask hunting her down, and she’s the mutinous prisoner hell-bent on turning his mind inside out. A more innocent time.

“How great is the difference in cost?”

The project manager waves a hand, and the holo shifts to show him a different graph. The options have been charted simply, but they’re obvious. Changing the design would set them back six standard months. It occurs to him that perhaps this is the real reason Rey is advocating for it. Not that it would really do anything to slow the First Order down, but-

“It’s not what you’re thinking.” She points the spoon over her shoulder. “I just wanted you to know. You shouldn’t trust him. He’s cheating you. He’s selling you dodgy merchandise.” Her swinging legs come perilously close to grazing his thigh. “Do you want this person responsible for buying your life support systems? I don’t think so. I just-”

He catches her right foot in his right hand. Rey drops her spoon, and one of his assistants actually twitches, as though she though she heard the sound of it clattering to the floor lightyears away.

“What are you doing?” Rey whispers.

Honestly, he has no idea. It wasn’t exactly a conscious decision. Under the table, he runs a gloved thumb over her instep. She’s been very busy, lately; there’s all kinds of tension in her tendons. She squirms on the table, but doesn’t withdraw her foot from his grasp. “That tickles.”

“Is this the sole issue holding up production?” he asks. (Pun most definitely intended, he thinks to himself.)

“No, Supreme Leader, I regret to inform you that it is not,” the project manager says. “Sourcing new composite kyber mirrors is proving to be an issue, as well. At Starkiller Base, we were experimenting with growing new mirrors from a composite crystal lattice within the planet’s core. The planet’s stability was key to growing the best mirrors, because they’re very delicate. But with the destruction of the base, we’ve…lost progress.”

Clearly it has taken a great deal of courage for the project manager to admit this, but with Rey’s foot in his hand he barely notices. It’s oddly soothing, digging his thumb into the span of flesh between the ball of her foot and smallest toe. Since giving up calligraphy he barely uses his hands for delicate work, but his fingers remember how to be gentle.

“It’s so important to be careful with delicate things, isn’t it?” he asks, more to her than to anyone else.

“Ben,” she murmurs, and her face is so flushed he almost feels his own skin glowing. He adjusts his seat and draws himself closer to the conference table, to keep his hands hidden. Doing so puts her foot in dangerous proximity to his lap; she could kick him if she wanted. He takes hold of her heel in his other hand and squeezes. _“Oh,”_ she breathes, and it flashes bright and clear across his whole being that she’s never been touched like this. She’s as innocent in this as she is in all things that aren’t machinery or hunger or solitude: rain, the lurch of hyperspace, the idea of a touch not being painful. Just this one pleasure, and she’s completely flummoxed.

“I’d like to see the growth process again,” he says, because this is officially the best meeting of his life.

The holo flips and the charts cycle again. The officers and planners and management around him shift uncomfortably in their seats, eager to be gone. But all he does is nod and keep his gaze forward and listen to the little moans Rey keeps trying to hold in.

“As you see, Supreme Leader, even the slightest vibration can alter the growth of the mirrors in their medium, compromising the quality of the entire…”

It was a mistake to ever be cruel to her. Cruelty, she understood. It was kindness, gentleness, feeling good — those things she had no defences for. It occurs to him, as the project manager drones on, that he could have turned her at Starkiller if he’d just offered her a hot bath and a good meal and a place to sleep. He could have kept her on _Supremacy_ if he’d kept his eyes off the throne and simply insisted on patching up her wounds. He need never have offered the galaxy. She didn’t want the galaxy. She wanted-

_“Ben,”_ she says, and it sounds like a plea, but he’s not sure for what. He gives her the tiniest glance, pretending to be looking at another display. Her mouth is open and her ears are red and the toes of her other foot are actually curling. With her flight suit unzipped he can see her pulse jumping in her neck. His sweet, sincere Rey, who has never deceived anyone but herself. She looks so confused. Like she has no other word for this feeling but his name.

“…and of course this impacts the intensity of the refraction achieved by each laser, and therefore the sustainability of the cannon over prolonged use.”

He’s about to make her come right here in front of the entire executive planning team. Ferocious joy and pride, the kind he hasn’t felt since his first days discovering the Force, rips through him. Through them both.

“I see,” he says, and some of the assistants must hear a change in his voice, because two of them turn and give him a strange look. “We do want our cannons to remain as strong as possible for as long as possible,” he adds. And in case Rey has not heard the message properly, he chooses that moment to cross his legs, so the sole of her bare foot sits squarely atop his own length.

She gasps so sharply she winks out of existence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why I think Kylo is a foot guy, but I think he's a foot guy. I have no textual basis for this. He just throws that vibe out there.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo senses a disturbance in the Force.

The pain is so sudden and so ferocious that he actually gasps out loud and suspects poisoning. But Hux is radiating genuine surprise, and he says “Ren?” instead of “Supreme Leader?”

“I…” He’s cold. Everywhere. So cold he can’t think. “There has been a disturbance in the Force,” he says, and stumbles off the bridge. He finds her in his ready room. She’s lying in a strange position on the floor. There is climbing gear tangled around her, but she hasn’t moved to free herself. Something is very, very wrong. His knees give out beside her. He is so incredibly cold.

“I fell.” She points. Her hand can barely lift up. “From up there.”

Stupidly, he actually looks up expecting to see something. All he can see is the ceiling of his own space: air ducts, distribution conduits. “How far did you fall?”

“I don’t know.” She swallows. “Ben, I can’t feel my legs.”

Fear ripples through him and he builds a wall to keep it from lapping at her. He bites one glove off and smoothes her hair back from her forehead. She’s sweating, but cool to the touch. “Can you feel this?”

Tears leak down her temples. She nods mutely. She’s trying desperately to hold in her fear. He pretends that he is wearing the mask again, and doesn’t allow his own terror to surface on his face.

“Good,” he says. “Focus on that. Focus on me.”

“I called and you came.” She sounds so surprised. So delighted.

“That’s right,” he murmurs. He continues stroking her hair, lets the backs of his fingers graze her face. Her eyes flutter closed. It makes the next part easier. “And now you have to tell me where you are.”

She frowns. “What?”

“There are at least two teams of bounty hunters on your trail. And when you tell me where you are, one of them will bring you to me.”

Her eyes snap open and a sob breaks through. “Is that really all you can think about, now? Turning me?”

He growls. “Don’t be ridiculous. You need a surgeon. You need-”

“I need you to call Finn. I need you to tell my friends.”

He’s shaking his head before she can even finish talking. “No. No. _No._ I’m not doing this. This is insane. You will tell me where you are, and-”

“You can’t trick me into-”

“I’m not tricking you! I’m-” He has to bite back a yell. He makes himself stare into her eyes. Makes his voice go soft. “I’m _saving_ you, Rey. You have to let me save you.”

Her hand rises to cover his. She presses her face into his hand. “You have your mother’s personal comm. It hasn’t changed. All you have to do is call. They know where I am.”

Tears blur his vision. “No. I won’t. The Resistance won’t help you. They can’t. They don’t have the doctors-”

“You don’t know that-”

“ _Yes I do!_ You think I don’t read a daily intelligence briefing about what kind of resources you have? Your miserable little rogue squadron can’t even feed itself. The First Order-”

“I want my friends to have my body, Ben.”

It flashes across his mind: the flames, the pyre. Peace and purpose. Her friends standing at her side, heads bowed. She did not call him for help. She called to say goodbye.

“No,” he says, and keeps saying it, louder and louder. “No. No. _NO_.” He leans down to her ear. “This is _not_ how it ends. Do you understand me? If you quit now, I will hunt down every single last one of them, and I will kill them. Personally. I’ll do it. You know I will.”

“Why are you crying?” she asks.

He wipes his face — his scar — with his gloved hand. “You know why.”

“Say it,” she whispers. Her hand squeezes his. “Say it.”

His mouth opens, and she vanishes. He’s alone, on his knees, forehead pressed into the floor. He screams and screams and screams.

* * *

This is how Hux finds him. It would be mortifying, under any other circumstances. But for once he’s completely detached from his own image. When he staggers to his feet, he says: “The bounty hunters. All of them. Get them on a channel.”

“Supreme Leader-”

“NOW.”

In the time it takes to bring all the hunters to heel, he has to think. She fell. From a great height. So great she needed actual climbing gear. Mountains. Caves. She is in a cold place, very cold, so cold he can still feel it under his own skin. She also isn’t able to call her own friends — either because her commlink has been lost or damaged in the fall, or because the signal itself is blocked by something in the surrounding environment. That means a strong magnetic shield.

Ilum. Vaqquor. Hoth.

He can split the teams and re-deploy them. But it might still be days before they can reach the right system, and Rey does not have days. Even if she can last — and she can, she’s strong, he reminds himself — the team might not find her. If it’s a planetary shielding issue, her own signature will be almost impossible to pick up. They need the coordinates.

“Tell me where she is,” he says, almost to himself, and the hunters glance at each other uncomfortably.

“I’m not sharing information with this lot,” one of them mutters.

The Force gives him what he needs so quickly he’s not even conscious of needing it. He feels the other man’s throat in his fist so firmly that it’s almost like he’s really there. “You will share everything you know with these people, or you will share your last breath with them. Is that clear?”

The Black Sun operative wriggles a yes, and he releases him. He stares at the other holos in turn. “Will I be dealing with any other displays of selfishness?”Silence. Good. “I have received actionable intelligence that your prey is injured on an ice planet, possibly one with a thick magnetic shield. The first of you to find her earns quadruple the fee.”

Hux sputters. “Supreme Leader-”

He raises a hand and Hux quiets.

“I want proof of life,” he continues. “There will be no disintegrations. There will be no questioning. You will alert me as soon as you have retrieved her, and then you will take her to the nearest First Order base, where I will pay you personally.”

The bounty hunters look at each other, then at him. “How injured?” one, a droid, asks.

“And what is the source?” asks another. “How do we know this isn’t a Resistance trap?” She coughs. “Maybe they’re leading you off the scent, Supreme Leader.”

“The source is unimpeachable,” he says, “and she is grievously injured.”

“The source, or the girl?” Hux murmurs.

“I wouldn’t need my own informants if you had done your job, General,” he snarls, and he sweeps away from the holo-table. “The bounty hunters were your idea. So far, they have failed. And I do not tolerate failure.”

“We almost had her, at the funeral,” the Twilek hunter muses. “But then my weapons jammed.”

“She’s been hiding out in old Imperial bases,” says the droid. “I’m not sure how she’s obtaining the codes, though.”

“How indeed,” Hux drawls, staring directly at his Supreme Leader.

“I lost her after she switched ships,” the Black Sun operative says. As one, the other hunters groan. “What a nightmare that was,” another says.

“I lost my best droid! I loved that thing! No offence, Rivethead.”

“None taken,” the droid says.

“This is taking too much time,” he says, and the hunters stiffen. “Find her. Now. I don’t care how you do it. I don’t care how much it costs. But you will find her, or I will find you. Dismissed.”

He quits the room, and he’s marching back to his quarters when Hux catches up to him. The other man swerves into his vision, face white and mouth pinched. “I don’t know what you’re doing, Ren, but I know it’s enormously stupid.” He steps up close to hiss: “And I’ll see you burn for it.”

He blinks. Hux braces for a choke-hold, or an explosion of rage. None comes.

“Armitage, if you get out of my way right now, I will make you a Grand Admiral.”

Hux sputters but says nothing, and he walks past. He finds her sprawled out on the floor of his bedroom, staring out the circle of transparisteel. “I see stars,” she says. He kneels beside her, sweeping his cloak over the both of them. “Are you real?” she asks.

“Yes. I’m here with you now, Rey.”

“Sometimes I wake up and you’re not real.”

He ignores her words and picks up her hands to rub some warmth into them. They’re ice. He blows on her fingers. The same has happened to him any number of times, of course. Just a vague sense in the night cycle of not being alone, the sound of breathing, a touch that ceases his dreams. But he’ll have plenty of time to tell her that when she’s safe and warm. He’ll be as real as she likes, anytime she likes.

“Tell me where you are,” he says. “Give me your coordinates.”

“Did you call them?”

“Someone is coming,” he says. “But they need to know where you fell.”

Her eyes narrow. That tiny furrow of doubt appears between her brows. His girl may be dying, but she’s still sharp as stray shrapnel. “You didn’t call them.”

“Hailing a Resistance frequency without arousing suspicion is harder than you might think, from here.”

She tries to sit up, and can’t. “You’re the _Supreme Leader_!” Her voice cracks. He strokes her hair.

“Listen to me. You fell below the surface of the planet. Even if the Resistance were looking for you, they might not find you. And they would still have to dig you out. It will go faster if they have the exact coordinates.”

“You just want me to join you-”

“Of course I want you to join me. I want you to be safe. I want-”

“What about what I want?”

He throws his head back in frustration. “Do you want to _die_ there? Is _that_ what you want, Rey?” He hears his father in his voice and perhaps for that reason, the next words sound like defeat. “Because it’s not what I want.”

Her eyes close. “It’s not what I want either. But…”

She trails off, and it takes a moment for him to realize she’s slipping. He leans over her and strokes a hand over her face. “Stay awake. Tell me where you are.”

Her head shakes, but she doesn’t open her eyes. “You’ll just come here, and…”

“And what? What will I do?”

She’s on the edge of sleep. “You’ll take me back with you.”

He runs one hand through her hair and uses the other to trace his fingers over her face. If he can keep her talking, her mind might give up the coordinates, or even just the planet’s name, a landmark, something, anything. “That’s right,” he says. “That’s exactly what I’ll do. And then what?”

Her face crinkles into a sob. She came here for something. Something very specific. The comm is well and truly broken; she tried it hours ago, before the hunger set in. But she has known hunger and it doesn’t frighten her. The cold does that. “I can’t let you take me,” she says.

“Why not?”

She had been astonished at the wreck of the planet, at how thoroughly the Empire had disgraced it. She felt it through her whole body, in her heart. They had said it was mined hollow-

“If I go with you, I won’t come back,” she says in a tiny voice. “It was so hard, Ben, you don’t know how hard it was. I can’t…”

Abruptly the scene shifts and he sees his old master’s throne room, sees himself prone on the floor. Feels her instinct to eliminate him altogether. And also another temptation, much greater, to bring him with her.And the confusion and shame and horror at having failed to convince him, at having been wrong about him, at what that yearning means.

He is not alone. He has never been alone. She feels it, too. She has always, always felt it, even when it felt like a wound. He shuts his eyes tight and holds his breath. Something like a sob emerges anyway. He bends double. Her voice is just above a whisper. 

“I can’t leave them. They need me. They need me more than you do.”

And this is the crux of it, for her. She knows he needs her. She feels it pulling at her every day. It’s like a bone that has never quite set properly and aches in bad weather: a persistent pain. But the others need her more. Every mine she sabotages, every slave she liberates, every restraining bolt she removes, every shipment of medicine she steals — they all prove that, to her. Of course he needs her. But these people will die without her.

“And you? What do you need?”

She almost laughs. “Now you ask me.”

“Tell me about your vision. Tell me what you saw. On the island.”

“We were standing together,” she says, and he sees it clear as day. She’s beaming at him, and there is a crowd, and she is dressed as an empress but laughing like a pirate and she is on his side and he is on hers and there are no more sides, there is only their side and everyone else.

And now she’s going to die here on Ilum-

“Ilum,” he says. “You’re on Ilum.”

Her eyes snap open. It’s the most alert she’s been for minutes. “How dare you!” Her hands rise to claw at him and he catches both of them easily. “I hate you.”

“Good,” he says. He kisses her knuckles, the palms of her hands. They’re a little warmer, now. “Good.”

He turns to tell the bounty hunters of her location via the comm. When he turns back, she’s gone.

* * *

Hours pass. He hears nothing.

* * *

A day. Nothing. The bounty hunters are looking, but they can’t find her. It’s not as though there’s a network of snitches on the planet’s surface; no one saw her come or go, and they have yet to detect her ship. In all likelihood it’s hidden in a cave somewhere, and magnetically shielded as a result. They could crawl Ilum for years, like treasure-hunters overturning every stone in hopes of discovering a relic, and still never find her.

And yet he knows she’s alive. If she were not, he would know that, too. He would feel it. He might never stop feeling it.

He stares and stares at Snoke’s data crystal and wonders. Would he be this connected to a clone? Would he feel the clone’s pain? Would her hungers be his? It seems impossible. Then again, their whole story seems impossible. Rey’s existence itself seems impossible: too powerful, too beautiful, too perfect. Even with Thrawn’s clone tanks, and the best technicians in the galaxy, he could never approximate that constellation of talent and will.

If Rey dies, will he die?

Perhaps this is why he hasn’t called her friends. Does he simply want to be free of this bond? If they evanesce into the Force together, will they still be separate? Will her ghost turn away from him, too? Will they spend eternity thus, two entangled stars, moving in unison but never touching?

Vader’s mask stares at him. It seems so silly to have found and kept it, much less to have brought it here to Mustafar. Some homecoming this was. He had hoped for something to rest inside him, when he came to this castle. He had hoped for the struggle, the conflict within, to subside. And yet here he is, staring at the molten ruins of a mask and the few precious brown hairs coiled carefully beneath it, in the one place no servant will ever touch.

He is up and moving before being entirely conscious of it. His steps take him to Informatics — the informal department rigged up in a decrepit old surveillance lab buried deep in the basement of the base — and Forces a girl with dishwater blonde hair to create an encrypted line through which she can open a channel. It’s not easy to create an account that can’t be traced and won’t be logged. It requires special privileges that anyone at his level would ordinarily receive without question — so long as they filed a formal request for them. Which of course he cannot do. And so she needs to perform a manual override.

He is a rebel infiltrating his own system.

His mother’s personal hashkey, the one guranteeing the end-to-end secrecy, may not even work any longer. Even if it someone is still checking the channel, he only has a six-minute window in which to get out the message. Then the codes will re-assemble for another ninety minutes, and he (or rather, the switchboard coder) will have to re-do the entire thing. He will need to either record a message and hope the switchboard sends it each and every time, or he will need to be there. And the Supreme Leader cannot spend the entire day in Informatics.

So he records the message. Because he cannot imagine anyone else on the other end of the line, he says:

“She’s on Ilum. She’s hurt. She’s in danger. And she needs you. I know you don’t believe me. You have no reason to trust me. But you owe my father a life debt, and that debt has now passed on to me, and I am asking you to find her. The bounty hunters are already on their way. If you can find her before they do, she’s yours. If they find her before you do, I’ll never let her go.” And then, because it seems prudent, he adds: “This is not a trap.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it would be more in keeping with the new trailers to do this part on Kef Bir, but for the stuff that happens later, I decided to keep it on Ilum. I know Ilum was a popular destination, as it were, in post-TLJ fic for a while, so bear with me. But these are probably some of my favourite scenes in the whole story, so I hope you enjoyed them!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo tries to bargain.

When he retires for the evening, she’s there waiting. The Force is either very cruel or very kind: it has laid her out on his bed, and for a moment it could be another night in another time, with other decisions behind them. His match, already asleep and dreaming and unable to stop him from looking all he likes.

“They’re coming,” he says, even though he’s not entirely sure it’s true.

She doesn’t answer. He crosses the room and she doesn’t stir, doesn’t speak. He’s out of the mask and out of his cloak and he is also out of time.She’s grey. She’s ice. He covers her up with the cloak and leans down to listen to her breathe. One of the lungs has deflated. He can hear that now. She’s going to die. It hits him all at once, as clear and cold as the skies over Ilum. She’s almost dead.

“Rey,” he says, with his voice and then his mind. <<Rey. Wake up.>>

She’s in there. Feeble. Like the time she didn’t bring enough water, and buried herself in the sands just before dawn, waiting for the moon to guide her home. There is only just the smallest spark. At any point, it might blow out.

“Rey, they’re coming. Your friends. The traitors and thieves you call friends. Remember?” He spans a hand over her face and shows it to her, shows her defiant and fierce and spitting on Starkiller, shows her the odd respect he’d had for it. (“She had spirit,” is what his father had said years ago, about his mother, and oh, he is so lost. He is so unforgivably stupid.)

“I’ll make you a deal.” That is what Solos do with death: they bargain, right up until the last possible minute. “I’ll make you a deal, Rey. If you wake up, right now,” he wipes his eyes, “I’ll give it all up. I promise. The war, everything. All of it. You win. But you have to open your eyes.”

Nothing.

“I need you to wake up.” He’s hoarse, now. The words tumble out of him, the ones he’s never said aloud: “Sweetheart, please. Please. You have wake up. You have to try. Please, baby, just try.”

Silence.

He stretches out beside her. It’s a horrific mockery of everything he’s wanted to do, everything he should have done. There is no capacity in him to heal. It occurs to him that he has learned nothing at all useful in his years under Snoke’s watchful eye. What had the old creature taught him, really? In the end? What was it all for, if not for a moment like this one?

“I wish I could be there with you,” he says, which is a stupid thing to say. He’s always with her, and she’s always with him. He split his spirit to the bone on Starkiller, and she cut him the rest of the way, so now half of him is always with her. Half of him is already on Ilum. If he could send the rest of himself there, he would. 

If he could send himself.

If he could.

_If._

If he only knew how.

If he only knew how to ask.

He sits up on his knees. He takes both her hands in both of his. They’re cold and limp and he holds them tight. He closes his eyes. Tastes salt. Like tears. Like blood. Like the blistering winds of Crait, blowing away the last of an illusion. And he says the words: “I need your help.”

The Force shivers all around him.

“Now you tell me,” his uncle says.

He opens his eyes and they are in a cave. Or rather, a hollow cavern. It’s relatively isolated, no wind, but a trickle of damp and water. He can sense every detail with perfect precision: the chill, the mineral taste to the air, the howling wind above. He looks up. She fell from a sickeningly great height. It’s so disturbingly real he thinks he might actually have transported himself, body and soul.

“Am I doing this?” he asks.

“Mostly,” his uncle says. “But I’m helping you. Since you asked nicely and all. That’s two you owe me.”

His uncle is older than he remembers. Thickly bearded, dressed in white. He looks like Rey’s memories. It suits him. He looks…happier, somehow. Complete. At ease, in a way he doesn’t remember from their time together.

“Two?”

His uncle gives him the look he gives especially dense students. “Ben, who do you think re-forged the bond, between the two of you? It should have died with Snoke. You didn’t question that?”

“I thought…” He stares down at her. “I thought it was because…”

“Because you love her. I know. Well, it wasn’t. Not entirely. That was part of why I did it. But mostly, I did it to show you what you were missing.”

At any other time, the insight of this man — the man who tried to kill him — into his innermost heart would have been shameful. Embarrassing. At any other time, he might have been angry. “You did it to torture me.”

“Was it torture?” his uncle asks. “Really?”

Something shifts at the core of his mind. Some small part of her is listening. “It wasn’t torture,” he says, as much to her as to his former master. “But this is.” He looks up again the ceiling of the cavern. He needs to blow a hole in it. Doing so will create a landmark that the searchers can find, and also give them a way to retrieve her. If they had flares…

There is a pack near her; she’s obviously rifled through it and used up her stores of water and food, waiting. Mercifully, there are also flares. The same kind, down to the brand name, that his father insisted on bringing for every trip. He grabs the empty canteen and stashes it under a trickle of water from above. He focuses on the stone and pushes and more water sluices into the canteen. Pain opens up behind his eyes. Everything he has ever heard about Force projection is true: only real Masters should even consider attempting it.

“Harder than you thought, huh?”

“Shut up,” he tells his uncle. He kneels beside her and cradles the back of her head in the palm of his hand, then tips the canteen toward her cracked lips. He watches her throat working and her eyelids fluttering. “Good, Rey. That’s good. You’re doing great, sweetheart.”

She sputters and coughs. There’s blood. On Mustafar, the hairs on his arms stand up. He thinks he might be sick. It’s not the blood — he’s seen his share of that. It’s how weak she sounds. It’s the thread she’s hanging by.

“Help is coming.” His voice is thick. He can barely get the words out. “Help is coming. You just have to hold on a little longer, I promise.”

He peers up at the cavern’s ceiling. It must be brittle for the weight of a single human to break it; the Empire’s mining efforts left dangerous pockets of empty space under the planet’s surface. That means that it should be easy to shift. But there’s a real danger that blowing a larger hole through it will cause more debris to rain down on Rey. He’ll have to punch through with one effort and catch anything that falls, with the other. It’s the type of delicate work he hasn’t done with the Force since killing Snoke — and in that case the object he manipulated was in the same room with him, not lightyears away.

“Lifting rocks,” he mutters.

He stands and holds up both hands, centring himself and gathering as much energy in his fist as he can. He punches up, and the pain in his head twangs between his ears like a plucked string. White stars dance briefly in his eyes. His stomach roils. What had he told her about Force projection? _You can’t be doing this. The effort would kill you._ He might just die here. They may die together.He huffs breath out and tries again. Pain rings down his spine. It feels like punching a planet in the face — which is exactly what it is. He smashes out again and again. Nausea boils up through him and he bends double and gags. Only bile comes up. He can't remember the last time he was able to eat. 

“Stop trying to push through,” Luke is saying. “Think about where the rocks want to be.”

“ _You_ lift them, then!” he snarls. “She’s dying! _You_ lift the damn rocks.”

“I can’t,” Luke snaps. “If I let you go now, you won’t even make it back to your body. You’ll be lost.”

“Fine! I don’t care! Just-” His breath hitches up and he can’t say the rest. He falls to his knees beside her. He strokes her hair, her face. Until this moment, he has thrilled at being her monster. He has enjoyed almost every second of being a villain, because villains get things done. But now he is useless and pathetic and irretrievably in love with a hero. And heroes have a funny habit of going off on damnfool idealistic crusades and getting themselves killed.

“I’m sorry.” He leans down and whispers into her ear. Her breath rattles and pops in her remaining lung. She is going to die here, and it is his fault, because sooner or later everything he touches dies. He’s crying: “I’m sorry, Rey. I’m sorry for everything. I’m so _sorry_ …”

A soft glow pools over both of them.

“There’s still time,” says a woman’s voice.

He turns to Rey, and his mother is there, holding Rey’s hand. She is impossibly young. Younger than he is now. She wears tactical white, and her braid in a crown. But the set of her mouth is his mother’s: grim, firm, all business. There is so much to say, and yet nothing to say. No words will ever suffice.

“I…” He swallows. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t you?” His mother tilts her head. “It’s pretty simple. You save the one you love. That's what the hero does.”

He looks and the whole cavern is glowing. There are Jedi here he doesn’t know, hundreds of them, male and female and big and small, all species, all colours, their robes both ancient and modern. This hollow place, this ruin, this gaping wound in what once was sacred, this is where they have all chosen to convene. All of them once made the pilgrimage here, and Rey came to join their history. Finally he sees the crystals, some of them mere dust, others scattered about, tiny pebbles. They sing together in small voices.

“You were never alone,” Luke says. “Neither of you. And _that_ is the final lesson.”

Something like a laugh waves through the communion of ghosts. He struggles to his feet and he’s about to scream something, tell them off. But they’re just waiting patiently, expectant. His grandfather looks at the crack in the ceiling above and then looks at him. He smiles. They are all smiling. Not mockingly. Encouragingly. Like they know something he doesn’t, some wonderful secret he’s about to discover. As though the task ahead is something only he can accomplish.

Something only a Sith can do.

The falling rocks will not be so dangerous to Rey if they are merely ash.

His fingers spark violet. Lightning sizzles up through the air and thunders across the surface of the cavern. It spreads and spreads, sparking, glowing. He feeds it. More. He can hear himself saying the words: “More. More. _MORE_.”

He hears Rey groan a little and it’s all he needs: the rage burns clear through him and he channels it up, up, up through his fists. There’s the rage at Snoke and the rage at his uncle and the rage at this war, this stupid, awful, wasteful war, and rage at Rey for doing this alone, for leaving him, and beneath that, the rage of the planet. This beautiful, ruined place, hollowed out and abandoned, her brightest treasures stolen from her womb and cut into instruments of death. Ilum’s rage glitters more brilliantly than any of her crystals, and he takes hold of it and lashes out, again and again and again, whipping the stone with threads of power until his arms ache.

“Stop,” his uncle says, but this is too good, he’s never had this kind of control before, never written his wrath so clearly on any surface. It’s all he can see. He tastes blood in the back of his throat and his bones feel hollow, but now Rey won’t need those flares, because he’s sending a pillar of fire into the sky.

“Let go,” says another voice, and he thinks it might be the other Ben, the namesake, but he almost doesn’t hear it over the sound of his own roar.

<<Ben!>> Rey says clearly, in his mind. <<Enough.>>

The power burns out and he falls to his knees. The hole above them is so broad he can see streaks of aurora curling green and pink across the stars. It’s so livid, so fantastic, that he almost misses the lights of a ship landing overhead. The lights grow brighter and brighter, expanding, obliterating his vision, and-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I set a cliffhanger on a literal cliff. I'm sorry. But not that sorry. 
> 
> Also, this chapter originally had appearances from Anakin and some others, but it felt way too rushed, and kind of like a Special Guest Star appearance. This way is a bit more intimate. 
> 
> And thank you for the comments and kudos! They really put a smile on my face.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, remember those tags I posted?

<<Rey.>>

He startles awake and hurts his head. A medpod. His own charts stare back at him: heartbeat, blood sugar, alpha patterns, a mild fever. He looks to his right; she’s not there. This is a private room.

A private room aboard a First Order ship.

He moves to extricate himself, but something keeps him in place. Binders. There are heavy binders at his wrists and ankles; belts harness his torso in place. When he reaches to Force them open, black spots bloom open in his vision.

“Easy, Kylo.” Patrice glides into his vision and looks at him a little sadly. Like he’s one of her misbehaving children. Kylo, she had called him, not Supreme Leader or Master. “You’re not well,” she informs him. “In fact, you’re very seriously ill.”

Of course. He’d collapsed on Ilum and his consciousness snapped back into his own body. It’s a miracle he’s even alive. Of course he needed medical attention. He’s about to tell her this, when he realizes his can’t speak. There is something in his mouth. Something that stretches all the way down his throat.

“The medics had to intubate,” Patrice says. “To feed you. You’ve been out for a long time.”

How long? But she doesn’t say. “The important thing is that you’re awake, now, and responsive. But you gave us all quite a scare. And now all you should worry about is getting some rest, and healing up.”

He jostles his restraints. Patrice smiles fondly. “Those are for your own good, Kylo. You were having seizures. So let’s just leave them on until the medics say it’s all right, hmm? They’re not painful, are they? Blink once for yes and twice for no.”

He blinks twice, but more out of confusion than anything else. Patrice smiles, and pats the transparisteel affectionately. “That’s the spirit. Now just focus on getting well, and you’ll be out of there in no time.”

* * *

But it’s a lot longer than no time at all. Patrice visits him daily. She reads to him, and tells him all the gossip, and he watches as she sharpens her nails or etches elaborate patterns across her collarbones. Med droids come in and check his progress. There are drips and catheters and a cleansing ultrasonic mist. There are drugs to help him relax. They grant him a strangely comforting distance between himself and his feelings.

The days blur together. And Rey is silent. Not dead, he thinks. If she were dead, he would know. If it had all been for nothing-

“Don’t cry, darling,” Patrice says. “I know it’s frustrating, being cooped up in there. But you really did a number on yourself. You’re very weak, you know.”

At no point does she mention the nature of his injury, or the side effect of his illness. What is his diagnosis? Does he have one? He knows that using the lightning could be damaging to the user’s tissues, aging them before their time. Is that what happened? Is he a wizened old man, now? He has not seen himself in a mirror since.

How long has it been? Days? Weeks? Why is no one telling him about the war?

“You need more time to rest,” Patrice says, and dials up something on the array, and leaves. Moments later, he’s asleep.

* * *

His muscles are atrophying. He’s sure of it. He’s also certain that he’s not truly ill. The medpod keeps saying that he has a fever, but he doesn’t feel it: no aches, no chills. He’s even feeling hunger, now; he wants to bite and chew and swallow, not feel the odd drip of satiation.

It occurs to him that they could starve him.

Because there is a they. There is Patrice, and there is Hux. Hux hasn’t been to see him, but when Patrice saw him last he caught the sight of Hux’ monogram on a pocket square draped carelessly out of her pocket. That means that the other Knights must be involved. They’re keeping him here. They’re keeping him intubated, so he cannot Force a conversation. They’re keeping one of his own Knights on hand, to help put him down if need be.

They know.

“Yes,” Patrice says clearly, not even looking up from her datapad. “We know. We all know. We know everything.”

“We know even more than you do,” Mai says, striding into the room and peering into his medpod. He thrashes weakly and she smiles. “But we still don’t know enough, Kylo. So it’s time for you to go back to sleep.”

She touches the dial and there is nothing.

* * *

In his dream, he comes back from a long day of meetings and all he wants is the ‘fresher. He is out of his boots and half out of his clothes before he finds Rey, sitting inside the shower, staring at nothing. He watches this from a distance, remote and safe, and sees himself struggling with what to do, what to say. He sees himself kneeling in front of her, waving a hand in front of her face, watches the alarm grow on his own face when she doesn’t respond.

“Rey,” he hears himself say. “Rey?”

No answer.

“You can’t ignore me,” he says, although she very well can. But she isn’t. He appears to make a decision, and snaps his fingers near her ear. She blinks, but doesn’t move. Just keeps staring straight through him.

“Can you not see me? I can see you.”

He looks at her hands clenched tight in her lap, mutters a curse word, and places a hand over hers. She comes alive: a sudden intake of breath, and her face crumpling. She folds in on herself, drawing her knees up, hanging her head. And he knows this reaction. He has seen this exact response to trauma before, when his Knights were young, when Snoke demanded certain tests of loyalty, and Patrice and Mai-

“Rey,” he says, a little stronger this time. More authoritative. Her eyes are wild when they finally land on him. His throat works to help him say the words. From this distance, he can observe how much it costs him to measure himself, be delicate, and not shake it out of her. “Rey, did someone hurt you?”

She shakes her head. Tears leak from the corners of her eyes.

“Do you need a medic?”

Again, she shakes her head.

“I want to help you,” he says, because it’s true. “Do you need help?”

Her lips curl inward. She sobs a little. “Just tell me,” he whispers, because he thinks it’s something terrible, something he doesn’t even want to name. “Rey, please-”

“I hurt Finn,” she whispers, and bursts into tears. He sits back on his haunches and looks around at the shower as though it holds some clue.

“You-”

“I was trying to fix the lightsaber and something went wrong and he’s hurt and it’s all my fault, and he’s my only friend, and now he hates me-”

“No, he doesn’t,” he hears himself say, and this is where he’s a truly terrible Sith, or son of darkness, or whatever it is he’s supposed to be. If he were better at this, he’d be manipulating her insecurity. Instead he’s crawling over to sit beside her and saying, “He doesn’t hate you, no one hates you,” because that is just what his mother said so many times, when they spoke of his father.

“You do,” she says. “You hate me.”

“You know that’s not true.” She says nothing but goes still, and he tries to catch her eye. “Rey. Look at me.” He reaches over and tips up her chin. “Look at me.”

She looks up, and damn it, her face is all red and puffy and she looks just as lost as he feels. When she’s gone he’s going to break things. “I don’t hate you.”

“I don’t hate you, either,” she whispers. “I wanted to, I tried, but I can’t, and it’s killing me-”

He wrenches her to him. She squeaks, freezes, and he freezes, too. Her tears smear across his bare collarbones. If he focuses he can feel her eyelashes fluttering in the hollow of his throat. This is what would have happened, he realizes, if he had simply closed the final gap between them in the turbolift. This awkwardness. And yet, he knows it’s exactly what he should have done. Carefully, he runs a hand up and down her back. Soothing. Innocent. Friendly.

“He’s not your only friend,” he says.

That undoes something in her. She sags against him, suddenly boneless, and tucks herself under his chin. She’s exhausted. They both are. He’d had no idea how tired he was until this instant. He feels almost weak with relief that something worse hasn’t happened. Accidents happen in training. It’s to be expected. She just needs to be more careful. Hesitantly, he slides his other arm around her. It’s a good thing she can’t see his face when she burrows in closer. He looks terrified. 

Slowly, he adjusts his chin over her head and clears his throat. “This is why I wanted to teach you. So you wouldn’t get hurt. And so you wouldn’t hurt anyone else.”

She’s silent for a long stretch. He keeps stroking her back. He has an odd notion that if he stops, the spell will be broken. It feels absurdly good just to hold her, and he’s no longer sure who is soothing whom. But he can feel her gathering the courage to ask the question: “Do you really care if I hurt other people?”

“If this is the result.” 

“So it’s just me you care about.”

“What hurts you hurts me. You know that.”

She pulls away slightly to look at him. “So, what, you’re just worried I’ll damage the merchandise?”

“I’m worried about everything,” he says. “And you’re not merchandise.” He’s playing with a bit of her hair between his fingers. “It’s killing me, too, Rey.”

She blushes up pink and stares at the floor. Her shyness slices into him all over again. It’s so misplaced, so unearned: his brave girl, normally so fearless when it comes to facing monsters, suddenly unable to meet his eyes. She sniffs hard and wipes her eyes. Tries to steer the conversation somewhere she can control. “What am I going to do?”

He shrugs. “That’s your decision. But you have to be careful.” He frowns. “And you should probably stop telling people that you have a broken lightsaber. It’s not exactly good operational security.”

She snorts. “Yeah, you should probably forget this ever happened,” she says.

“I should probably forget this ever happened,” he agrees. And because the Force abhors a paradox, she has only a single second to register her surprise before she disappears. Moments later he’s sitting alone in the shower, half-dressed, and wondering how he got there. He runs a hand over his face. “Need more sleep,” he says, and stumbles in the direction of the bed.

* * *

“She was using you,” Mai says.

He shakes his head furiously. Tears roll down his face. No. She wasn’t. It was a mistake; she didn’t mean to erase herself from his memory. She wouldn’t.

“Yes, she was,” Mai says, and throws a map view across the surface of his medpod. Red dots are scattered over the image of familiar systems. “Look. These are First Order weapons depots.” She toggles the view. Blue dots appear over the red ones. “And this is where your pet Jedi has been spotted. Your bounty hunters have been extremely helpful, by the way.”

He growls around the feeding tube.

“Turns out Patrice’s husband’s money is even easier to spend than the First Order’s,” Mai continues. “You may have offered to pay them quadruple the usual price to find her, but we did it first. They’ve been feeding you false information this whole time, Kylo. They told us the moment you contacted them. We were there at Ilum, waiting.”

His blood freezes. They have her. Of course they do. The Force floods him. His bonds shatter. Mai’s face registers mild alarm, and she slaps something on the medpod, and he feels the drugs enter his system. They drag him down and down and down. The last thing he sees is Mai and Patrice comparing notes, peering down at him like he’s a bug in a killing jar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the comments and kudos!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo's Knights have opinions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter this time, but the next one is one huge scene, so it felt like a better balance.

In his dream, he’s dreaming.

It’s a strange sensation, watching himself sleep. It feels like death. Maybe Patrice and Mai want him to feel dead. If the alternative is them peeling back the layers of his mind and memories with drugs and the Force, he would prefer death. If he knew for certain that Rey were all right, he would die happily then and there. But instead here he is in this weird memory between memories, watching himself twitching and groaning, muttering to himself, grinding his teeth. The sheets are a black tangle all around him. Only soft red track lighting along the floor illuminates the room. It’s just enough to see a slender pale hand steal across the coverlet. Her hand settles on his shoulder. On his scar. 

“You’re dreaming,” she murmurs.

She’s dressed for the day. Perhaps this is her afternoon. She appears to be reading something. Or maybe fixing something. She’s awake, wherever she is. He rolls over and squints at her.

“Am I?" His gaze flicks over her. He watches himself watching her, watching the rise and fall of her chest, the quirk in her lip. 

She smiles a little. “Maybe." 

“I was dreaming about the clone tanks.”

She frowns. Tilts her head. “Clone tanks?”

He sits up in bed. She averts her eyes. He watches himself decide how to explain. “Snoke took a sample of you, on Starkiller. He had a plan to put you in a clone tank. He planned to clone many of you. Many of us. Actually.”

Her eyebrows lift. _“Us?”_

“A combination of us.”

Her mouth falls open. “And you’re just telling me this _now?_ I -- _we_ \-- could have..." She stumbles on the next word. She licks her lips and swallows hard. "Clones. Out there. Alone. Waiting.” 

All at once it hits him what he's said. _Alone. Waiting._ It would kill her to abandon her own family. It might kill her now, to know that she really does have someone waiting, maybe many someones, maybe even many _little_ someones, other little girls who cry at night wondering if she'll ever come back for them. Maybe little boys, too, angry without knowing why, listening to the Force for...what? For their master's voice? For someone big and tall and strong to come and pick them up and smile and say _Hey starfighter, don't cry, it's all right, we're all fine, we're all fine here, now?_ Snoke had said he should "hybridize" them. That all he would need was Rey's "material." And if someone else had followed through on Snoke's plan...

They might have children. Their own children. His and hers. 

But he can't say that. If he says it, it'll be real. And if it's real then things will have to be different. If it's real, there is nothing he won't burn down. No one he won't eliminate. So what he says is, “I'm not sure he ever followed through with it. Snoke kept a lot of secrets. I don’t know who else knows about the plan. But it’s your body, your data. You should know.”

“You’re damn well right I should.” She risks a tiny glance in his direction. “Thank you. For telling me.” She twists something in her lap. Her next words are a whisper. “A combination of us?”

“More of that mighty Skywalker blood. That was always his obsession. That’s why apprenticed me. I see that, now.” He studies her. She's trying hard to keep her breathing steady. It's not quite working. He watches her blink something out of her eye. He says to her the only thing that's comforted him when he imagines this particular possibility. "We would _know_ , Rey. We would _feel_ them. In the Force." 

"Oh, like I felt _my_ parents?" 

"It's not..." He runs his hands through his hair. “I’m such an idiot.”

“No, you’re not,” she mutters. “Well. You are. Kind of. A little.”

He’s rubbing his temples. “No, I’m a big idiot, because now that I’ve told you about the tanks, you’ll go off alone to destroy them, and get yourself killed.”

“Oh, thanks for the vote of confidence. Idiot.”

“Don’t go,” he says, from behind his hands. “Just don’t. Pretend you don’t know. Pretend this whole conversation never happened. That’s what I’m going to do.”

She's incensed. “What? Why?”

He twists around and sits directly in her line of sight. She looks everywhere but at him and his chest and his legs. “Because if I have to think about you out there alone on some quest to destroy Snoke's legacy and...and getting murdered by clones of yourself, then I’m...I'm going to burn this castle to the ground!” His voice echoes. He masters his breathing. "And that won't end well for me. Or you. Because if they find you, Rey..." His voice cracks. His eyes are wet. "Rey, if they catch you, I can't..." 

Her mouth opens and closes. The red light hides her blush, but she has no way of knowing that. "Come with me," she says. "Ben. Just join me. Now. We can do this together. We can face it _together_. Whatever it is. You and I. There's nothing we can't-"

"That sounds familiar." His voice is lead. She flinches. "I offered you this, Rey, I _begged_ you for this, and now you expect _me_ to join _you_? Now that _you_ need something?" 

Her grief turns to fury in the span of a single breath. "This isn't about me! They could be out there, Ben. They could be out there. Waiting."

"You don't know that. I don't know that."

"No. But someone does. And if you're wrong..." Her lips fold in on themselves. "Ben, I have to try. You know I have to try." 

He leans their foreheads together. "Don't do this. Don't go." He shifts a little and whispers it in her ear. "Please."

She squeezes her eyes shut. Almost laughs to herself. "That sounds familiar." She snaps something shut in her lap and finally looks up at him. “Fine. We’ll pretend it never happened.”

He looks suspicious, but he nods. “Good.”

“Great.” He watches her make a choice. She reaches over and touches his hand. When he looks up and meets her eyes, she says in a clear, calm voice: “You will forget telling me about the clone tanks.”

He nods again, as though she’s had a wonderful idea. “I will forget telling you about the clone tanks.”

“You will go back to sleep, and you won’t dream.”

“I’ll go back to sleep. I won’t dream.”

Her smile is very sad. She reaches out and tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. He turns his face a little to feel that warmth. “You’ll feel better, tomorrow.”

“I’ll feel better tomorrow.”

For a moment they just smile at each other, and then it’s like he’s forgotten she’s even there. He rolls over and slides under the covers and closes his eyes. Her hand strays into his hair. She’s carding the locks in her fingers when she fades from view. In his sleep, he sighs.

* * *

“Touching,” Mai says.

He’s weeping. What else has happened? What else doesn’t he know? Did she ever go on the hunt? Did she find anything? And where are they keeping her?

He’s in a new room with a new medpod, now. It’s a high pressure, high oxygen glass coffin. The sort used for burn victims — the sort Vader himself once recovered in. Even the smallest spark of Force lightning will ignite the air, and burn him alive. Mai and Patrice inform him of this in a dry, clinical way, as though they are medics.

“If you try to compel us with the Force, or lash out in any way, we will vent the oxygen,” Patrice says, sounding again as though she’s speaking to her children. “Now, I’m going to test it, just to show you what it can feel like. That way you won’t make any mistakes. All right, Kylo?”

She doesn’t wait for him to nod. She simply twists a dial and his throat squeezes and there’s nothing, nothing at all. He knows now what he’s been doing to Hux each time he chokes off the other man’s air. It’s horrifying.

“That’s better,” she says, when he sputters back to life, coughing and spitting on his hands and knees.

“Where is she?”

“That would be telling,” Patrice says.

“Just focus on helping yourself, Kylo,” Mai says. “You’ve always been good at that.”

He tries to sit up as tall as he can. It hurts. He’s so weak, now. He hates not having the space to stand. “I want to see her. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But you have to let me see her.”

Mai rolls her eyes. “You’ll tell us anything we want to know anyway. You have no other choice. You’re not in a position to negotiate, here.” She stands up and approaches the tank. “Do you even know what’s happened to you? You’ve been disgraced. And everyone thinks you’re dead. Even the First Order. Especially the First Order. As far as they know, you died on Mustafar, playing stupid games with the Force like Skywalker. Only one person in the First Order knows you’re alive, and he’s the one who helped us hide you here.”

“Hux,” he murmurs.

“That’s the one.” She taps the transparisteel. “He was all too happy to be rid of you. Gave us everything we needed.”

“And you two?” He glances at both of them. “How do you feel about all this?”

The two women share a glance. “Not bad,” Mai says.

“I’m unconflicted,” Patrice adds.

“What about the others?”

“The others are busy. But we all agreed that you were unstable, and thoroughly compromised, and we needed to do something about you.” She looks almost disappointed. As though his stupidity is not merely unfortunate, but actively offensive. “Honestly, what were we supposed to think? First there’s that stunt with Skywalker, which was a huge media backfire. Then you don’t bite on Snoke’s bait for the clone tanks, but the tanks themselves get destroyed."

His heart stops. Rey did destroy the tanks, after all. Did she destroy any clones? Were there any to destroy? 

But Patrice isn't finished. "And suddenly, Tanas’ potentials go missing. Meanwhile, old Imperial bases and First Order depots are getting blown to pieces by people who know our codes. But are the bounty hunters allowed to kill the Jedi witch? No. Because _you_ ordered them not to. Of course we put it together, Kylo.”

It hurts more than it should. He’s familiar with betrayal. Or he should be, by now. He simply didn’t expect it from his Knights. “You didn’t trust that I had my reasons? After everything? After the temple? After Snoke?”

“You killed Snoke,” Patrice snaps.

“You ruined everything!” Mai is indignant. “Things were going so well. The First Order was on track to take over the galaxy. Snoke was distracted. The rest of us were mostly free. And then you have to go catch feelings for some filthy scavenger sand-flea from over-” She catches herself. Sighs. “Anyway. It doesn’t matter. The point is that we’re stuck cleaning up your mess. Again.”

“Again? I led you out of that smoking hole. I taught you-”

“You couldn’t teach a school of fish, Kylo.” Mai paces back and forth along his tank. This has been building in her for a long time. Her rant sounds well-practised. “We had a plan. Remember? The plan? It was a good plan. It involved saving food and money and getting a good ship and faking our own deaths, and not having to kill all the other students at the temple. But then you see one measly lightsaber and and suddenly everything’s on fire.”

“Luke Skywalker tried to kill me!”

“Well he should have finished the job! We’d all be better off!”

Her eyes are blazing. Then she turns on her heel and marches out of the room. He’s left alone with Patrice, who sighs through her pursed lips. Strong displays of emotion have always left her a little uncomfortable. As far as he knows, the only people she’s ever truly loved are her children, and only on their good days.

“Is that how you see it?” he asks. “Have you felt that way, all this time?”

Patrice shrugs. She’s tired. Wherever they are, it’s wearing on her. He can tell, because her makeup is flawed and she gestures with her hands, the way she used to more often when she was a girl. “You were always a spoiled brat. Ben Solo, Kylo Ren, the Supreme Leader. Whoever you are, you only ever think about yourself. You even let your precious pet Jedi take the fall for Snoke’s death! We would have supported you, if you’d come forward and told the truth. Half of us expected you to kill him ages ago! Instead you hid behind her skirts like a child. She’d never have wound up on Ilum if you’d just shown a little backbone.”

The words hit him like a body blow. The truth is more effective than any other weapon she could have drawn. He recoils in on himself. Of course he could have asked for help. He could have protected Rey. He could have freed them both. If he had only reached out.

“And that’s how it’s always been, by the way,” Patrice reminds him. “The rest of us are out there doing real work, getting things done, clearing the path to move the First Order forward. Of course, all of that was too slow for the likes of Prince Ben Solo. You never had the patience for destabilizing the Republic. It takes years. But you had the bloodline, and so Snoke always preferred you.”

“Well, I wish he hadn’t,” he rasps.

“Too late, now.” She rises and frowns at him through the tank. “Did you have any idea? Did you have even the slightest clue about what she was doing to your mind?”

Tears sting his eyes. “No. I didn’t. I still don’t.”

Patrice shakes her head. “Pathetic. You’re worse than your father.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the establishment of the Knights of Ren isn't canonical, here, based on what we've learned from the comics. But I wrote this before I knew that, and I still really like Mai's rant. Ultimately, it won't matter that much to this particular story.
> 
> And thank you for the comments and kudos! I swear that Rey will have a chance to redeem herself. Eventually. I just really wanted to get into the possibility of her misusing the Force, in part because she's had so little real training, and hasn't grown up with it the way Ben has. She's really powerful, and she might not always use that power in the most ethical way at first -- especially if it's the difference between winning and losing.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is finally a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not quite Christmas, and not even #Yuletide, but I wanted to give us all a present.

In his dream, she’s sitting across from him as he takes breakfast in his quarters. Lately he’s been waiting around, avoiding the officers’ mess, because she has a habit of popping up. His breakfast appears to be her dinner; she looks worn. But with the Resistance, it’s impossible to tell. They don’t even have proper rations for each meal of the day. She’s eating a wafer of grayweave. She nibbles it in tiny doses. Her teeth make slow work of it.

“Can you see what I’m eating?” he asks, staring at the grilled eel and soup and salad and porridge and hardboiled eggs and tea.

“No,” she says. “I can taste it, sometimes. You had a dessert last week that I liked.”

“I don’t eat dessert.”

“Well, it was sweet, whatever it was,” she says defensively, clutching her wafer with both hands.

“Oh. Right. The dragonheart fruit. That was breakfast, not dessert.” He frowns. “Are you allergic to anything?”

She shrugs. “Maybe? I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”

“I guess we will.”

She nibbles more and swallows. “Are you? Allergic to anything? Is there something I shouldn’t eat?”

He shakes his head. “No. Not really. I mean, I hate pickled things, but-”

“How can you hate pickled things? Pickles are delicious!”

“No, they’re not. They’re sour, or bitter, and they smell awful, and-”

“But they’re so good for you! Pickle brine is a tonic! There’s nothing like pickle brine on a really hot day!”

“That’s disgusting,” he says, but he can’t stop the smile on his face. “I don’t know what they pickle on Jakku, but-”

“Well, there’s redsprout, and rankweed, and thousand-year proteinloaves buried in the Sinking Sands-”

“Stop; I’m trying to eat.” He’s smiling so hard his face hurts. Not least because she’s beaming, too, smiling with all her teeth, and it feels like he’s finally glimpsing everything he missed by not going with her. They hold the smile for just a beat too long and then both look at their respective meals and take refuge in their beverages.

She clears her throat. “What’s on Rakata Prime?”

The sticks drop out of his hand. One of them bounces off the table and rolls to the other end of the room. He watches it settle against the wall. When he looks at her she actually seems a little scared. And she should be. She should absolutely be scared of Tanas, and his pupils.

“Don’t ask me that,” he says.

“I…” She rolls her lips inward. “I had a dream. About a temple. On Rakata Prime.”

Tanas, signalling. Maybe. Pulsing like a star through the Force, trying to pick up attention from Force-sensitives. Luring them in. Luring her, too.

“There’s nothing for you, there.”

“It sounded like there were children there. It sounded like they were in pain.”

Fear ripples through him quietly. What is Tanas doing? What isn’t Tanas telling him? “Do not go to Rakata Prime,” he whispers.

She frowns. “Why not?”

“It’s not your problem,” he says. “It’s mine.”

Her frown deepens. “What does that mean, exactly?”

He shakes his head. “No. I’m not doing this with you. It’s my responsibility. Let me handle it.” He reaches for his soup. “There are plenty of other things of mine to destroy. You don’t need to bring down some rotting temple on-”

_“Ben.”_

His face jerks up like a fish on a hook. Her skills have improved. From this distance in time, he wonders if it’s because the lightsaber was broken. Perhaps she’d had to improvise, develop herself in other ways.

“Ben,” she says, “you will tell me what is happening on Rakata Prime, and you will tell the truth, no matter what I ask.”

He nods. “One of my Knights is there, teaching his students in the ways of the Sith.”

“How many are there?”

“Two students. He’s gathering more. The dream you had was probably a lure, meant to draw them in. It worked on you because you aren’t being careful enough. You still need a teacher.”

He watches her master her frustration with him and continue the questioning. “Do you know where the others are?”

“No.”

She nods. Then, gathering herself, she asks: “Did you put him up to it? Searching for them?”

“No. The mission was Snoke’s idea.”

“But you’ve let him continue that mission.”

“If I deploy him on another, he will suspect me. And then he will probably kill me.”

Her eyebrows raise. “No love lost between you two, then?”

“It’s possible to love someone and still feel the need to kill them.” His eyes flood. It’s obvious that he’s barely aware of it. “Sparing someone you love is really just sparing yourself that pain. It’s selfish. Doesn’t get you anywhere.”

Her eyes are just as wet as his. “Why did you kill your father?” she whispers.

“Snoke told me to.” His voice cracks. He sounds younger than his years — a foolish child, after all. “He said it would complete my training. He said it would be over. And then…” Tears slip down his face. He does nothing to wipe them away. He’s breathing too hard, too fast. “And then…”

“It’s all right, you don’t-”

“I thought I could keep you!” He’s shattering, coming apart right there at the breakfast table, weeping openly and not even bothering to clean himself up. “I thought if I was finally just good enough, just once, then-”

She closes the distance between them and he buries his face in her stomach. Awkwardly, her arms settle over him. He roars. It’s an old scar and a fresh wound all at once. The rejection, the knowledge that he would never measure up, that deep down they were all afraid of him. “And you didn’t even want me,” he murmurs, muffled, into the fabric of her tunic.

“What?”

He looks up. “You didn’t want me. You abandoned me.”

“Ben,” she whispers. The pain is so clear on her face that he almost wishes he’d said nothing. Because she knows about abandonment. She knows what it’s like to be left behind. And maybe, for once, she understands why her loneliness was the first thread of her feelings that led him through the maze of her heart. Because then he’s pulling her down and she’s pulling him up for an awkward series of kisses. She has no idea how to kiss, so she kisses his forehead, his cheeks, even his nose, before he gently steers her mouth to his. He seals the kiss once, chastely, then pulls back, her face cradled in his — mercifully ungloved — hand.

“Rey,” he says, and she nods a little, and this is all the permission he needs to sweep both her legs over his and pull her up higher on his lap. She squeaks and he curls his arm around her waist and buries his other hand in her hair. Then he’s kissing her, drinking her, until she gasps for air and he moves to her neck. “Rey,” he says, in both his voices, the recitation unfolding across her mind and skin alike. “Rey, Rey…”

From this distance in time, he can see how eager she is. She grinds down and arches up. She tugs his hair and that does something visceral to him; he groans into the kiss and pulls her around to straddle him fully.

“Thought you wanted to be friends,” she mutters.

“When did I say that?” he snorts, because of course he has no memory of saying that. This is when her face falls completely. She realizes what she’s done. How she’s compromised him. How she’s compromised herself. She stares at him, horrified, and he stares back. He runs his hands up her ribs. Frowns.

“Rey.” His frown deepens. “What is it?”

Tears spill down her face. She gasps a little. He draws her to him carefully, smoothing her hair, stroking her back. She has commanded his honesty, so he says the most honest things he can: “We can slow down. We can stop. If you want. It’s all right. I promise. Shh…”

She sobs into his neck. She is already mourning the loss of this moment. Of the words she is about to make him forget. Of the history they will no longer share.

“Sweetheart, what is it?” He vacillates between terror and delight — his girl, in his lap, so overcome that she weeps into his shoulder like he’s the one she trusts most. His own tears are now completely forgotten. She fits there like the Maker crafted her just for him. His arm tightens around her middle and his other hand strokes her hair. He kisses her temple. “Hush,” he whispers. “Hush, now. That’s it. Everything’s perfectly all right, now. We’re fine. We’re fine, here, now.”

She gentles, quiets. He perches his head on her shoulder and closes his eyes. It should be like this forever, he decides. Not with the crying, obviously, but it should be him giving her this. Reminding her that she’s enough. That this is enough. He lets the sensation flow through the bond: his total contentment with just holding her. That he’s satisfied, even happy, with this simple thing. Even if he’s forgotten, for the most part, what happiness actually feels like. The memory of it feels something like this. Her breath hitches.

Rey sits up in his lap and peers into his eyes with her bleary ones. She sniffs hard and wipes her face. Her mouth opens to say something, and her face crumples again. He runs his thumb over her cheek.

“It’s bigger than us,” he says. “Isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” She nods. She tries to speak again, but can’t. Instead she leans her head against his. “Do you trust me?”

“With my life.”

“If I had to do something really terrible, something that hurt you, could you forgive me?”

He moves a little and kisses her forehead. Keeps his lips there as he considers. He is not a forgiving man. Never has been. And yet. And yet. She has Forced him to be truthful. “I forgave you when you scarred me. And I forgave you when you left me on Supremacy. I’d say the odds are in your favour.”

She’s trembling. “I’m frightened. I’m so frightened, all the time.”

“You’re the bravest person I know,” he reminds her.

She sits up again. Chews on her lip. Squeezes her eyes shut and asks, hoarsely: “Do you love me?”

He huffs a laugh. He’s grinning when her eyes open and she stares him down. “Don’t be stupid,” he says, still smiling. Then his smile falters. He swallows hard. Strokes her face. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Give me an honest answer.”

“You’re the only person in this galaxy I give a damn about.” The words just fall out of him. It’s such a relief, being truthful.

She wipes her eyes. “So the rest of the galaxy can just burn, is that it?”

“That’s it.” It sounds cold, even to him. He laces their fingers together. “But if something were to happen to you, I think I might die. You’re the…flaw. In me.”

She scowls. “Excuse me?”

“Everything we build — the Death Stars, Starkiller, even the crystal in my saber — has a flaw. Somewhere. A vulnerability. A crack. This one weakness that can destroy everything.” He lifts his eyes. “And you’re mine.”

She leans her forehead against his. “Please forgive me, Ben.”

He doesn’t hear what she says next. She whispers it in his ear. But he acts on it anyway: he watches himself notice the missing chopstick, frown at it, and then pick up a spoon instead. Then he starts eating again as though nothing has happened, as though his whole world hasn't just exploded. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No spoilers here, please! You never know who is reading, and you don't want to ruin someone else's experience. I am grateful for kudos and comments, though!

**Author's Note:**

> So I started this fic almost immediately after watching TLJ, but didn't finish it. Then I started hearing more about how Episode IX might turn out, and I thought "Hey, that sounds really familiar!" So, in the spirit of "I called it!" I thought I would post it. Also because I'm sort of stuck and need help deciding how to end it. I'm open to suggestions. Happy Reylo Advent!


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